The Effect of Kyolic Aged Garlic Extract on Gut Microbiota, Inflammation, and Cardiovascular Markers in Hypertensives: The GarGIC Trial

Abstract

Background: Previous research suggests Kyolic-aged-garlic-extract to be effective in reducing blood pressure in a large proportion of hypertensive patients similar to first-line standard antihypertensive medication. High blood pressure has been linked to gut dysbiosis, with a significant decrease in microbial richness and diversity in hypertensives compared to normotensives. Furthermore, gut dysbiosis has been associated with increased inflammatory status and risk of cardiovascular events.Objective: To assess the effect of Kyolic aged GARlic extract on Gut microbiota, Inflammation, and Cardiovascular markers, including blood pressure, pulse wave velocity and arterial stiffness.Methods: A total of 49 participants with uncontrolled hypertension completed a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial of 12-weeks, investigating the effect of daily intake of aged-garlic-extract (1.2 g containing 1.2 mg S-allylcysteine) or placebo on blood pressure, pulse wave velocity and arterial stiffness, inflammatory markers, and gut microbiota.Results: Mean blood pressure was significantly reduced by 10 ± 3.6 mmHg systolic and 5.4 ± 2.3 mmHg diastolic compared to placebo. Vitamin B12 status played a role in responsiveness to garlic on blood pressure in 17% of patients. Garlic significantly lowered central blood pressure, pulse pressure and arterial stiffness (p < 0.05). Trends observed in inflammatory markers TNF-α and IL-6 need to be confirmed in larger trials. Furthermore, aged-garlic-extract improved gut microbiota, evident by higher microbial richness and diversity with a marked increase in Lactobacillus and Clostridia species after 3 months of supplementation.Conclusions: Kyolic-aged-garlic-extract is effective in reducing blood pressure in patients with uncontrolled hypertension, and has the potential to improve arterial stiffness, inflammation, and gut microbial profile. Aged-garlic-extract is highly tolerable with a high safety profile as a stand-alone or adjunctive antihypertensive treatment, with multiple benefits for cardiovascular health.Trial Registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry ACTRN12616000185460 (https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=370096)

Preliminary evidence of the clinical effectiveness of odourless garlic

“…The study by Okuhira, Holbert, Sandhu, and Steiner ((2000)) cited in Budoff et al (2009) was not published in Phytomedicine as stated and could not be (2002), Dillon, Lowe, Billington, and Rahman (2002), Ohnishi, Ohnishi, and Ogunmola (2000), Rahman and Billington (2000), Dimitrov and Bennink (1997), Abdullah et al (1989), Kawashima et al (1989, 1985, and Miyoshi et al (1984) were open and uncontrolled ( Figure 1a). We identified one further study in CENTRAL that lasted less than 8 weeks (Nagata et al, 2017); the other study identified was that of Ried, Travica, and Sali (2018), a candidate for extraction from the PubMed search (Figure 2a). The five congress contributions found in CENTRAL were later published as original articles.…”

S-1-Propenylcysteine Improves TNF-α-Induced Vascular Endothelial Barrier Dysfunction by Suppressing the GEF-H1/RhoA/Rac Pathway

“…These ndings suggested that anti-atherosclerotic effect of AGE may be attributable to its ability to protect and maintain the vascular endothelial barrier function. AGE has been reported to exert various pharmacological effects, such as anti-atherosclerotic [20,[22][23][24], anti-hypertensive [25,26] and anti-in ammatory effects [20,21], which are considered to be attributable to its sulfur-containing constituents. Therefore, we investigated whether S1PC, SAC and SAMC, three major sulfur-containing constituents in AGE, affect the endothelial barrier function.…”

“…Aged garlic extract (AGE) is a unique garlic preparation that is produced by aging of raw garlic in an aqueous ethanol solution for more than 10 months. AGE has been shown to exert various biological and pharmacological activities such as anti-in ammatory [20,21], anti-atherosclerotic [20,[22][23][24], antihypertensive [25,26] and anti-oxidative effects [27,28]. In particular, AGE prevented progression of cardiovascular diseases through the improvement of vascular endothelial dysfunction in clinical studies [24,26,[29][30][31][32].…”

Mechanisms underlying the attenuation of chronic inflammatory diseases by aged garlic extract: Involvement of the activation of AMP‑activated protein kinase (Review)

“…Accordingly, inflammation induces insulin resistance and hyperglycemia. Previous studies have suggested that AGE suppresses inflammation in clinical trials and animal studies (23,28,29,34). AGE has been shown to inhibit the expression of Ccl2/Mcp-1 mRNA in adipose tissue and liver of TSOD mice (34).…”

“…Aged garlic extract (AGE) is produced by aging garlic (Allium sativum L.) in a water-ethanol mixture for >10 months at room temperature and contains several characteristic sulfur compounds, such as S-allylcysteine (SAC), S-1-propenylcysteine (S1PC) and S-allylmercaptocysteine (SAMC) (15,16). AGE has been shown to exert immunomodulatory effects (17)(18)(19)(20), anti-atherosclerotic effects (21)(22)(23)(24)(25), anti-hypertensive effects (26)(27)(28)(29), antioxidant effects (30)(31)(32) and blood flow-improving effects (33) in clinical and animal studies. In addition, recent studies have suggested that AGE and its components can induce the activation of AMPK in several cell types and tissues (19,23,(34)(35)(36)(37).…”