Myocardial Perfusion Increases After Low-fat Meal With Olestra

WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) – Patients with early signs of heart disease had improvements in myocardial perfusion after eating a meal made with the fat substitute olestra, researchers said here Tuesday at the Institute for Clinical PET 12th annual meeting.

The study involved subjects with coronary artery endothelial dysfunction. In those who ate a low-fat banana muffin breakfast with 2.7 g triglycerides and 44 g of olestra, myocardial perfusion increased 11% to 12% following the meal, compared with results in patients who ingested a high-fat muffin with 46.7 g of triglycerides. Myocardial perfusion was measured using rubidium PET technology.

Furthermore, blood triglyceride levels among subjects who ate the high-fat muffins rose rapidly 6 hours after they ingested the meal, with the median change from baseline increasing to 170 mg/dL. Conversely, no significant increase in blood triglyceride levels was measured after patients ate muffins containing olestra.

“We know olestra decreases cholesterol, we know it promotes weight loss and we know it increases perfusion to the heart when given in a meal,” Dr. Barbara Cook, the study’s principal investigator, told Reuters Health. “As a physician, I recommend this to my patients.” Dr. Cook is director of research in Alegent Health Bergan Mercy Medical Center’s department of nuclear medicine, Omaha, Nebraska.

The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 19 subjects was sponsored by Proctor & Gamble, which manufacturers olestra. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved olestra for a line of snack foods, primarily consisting of potato chips.

Patients would have to eat more than five 1-oz bags of chips containing olestra to gain the equivalent benefits of the muffin containing 44 g of olestra, Dr. Dale A. Cooper, a Proctor & Gamble principal scientist, told Reuters Health.

The study did not compare the results of subjects eating an olestra-based meal to those of subjects eating a meal low in fat without olestra. Proctor & Gamble’s Dr. Greg Allgood told Reuters Health that researchers could not conduct a controlled study under such circumstances and be able to match carbohydrate, protein and cholesterol content.

According to the research team, this was the first study to directly measure myocardial perfusion after participants ate potentially “heart healthy” foods. While other studies have shown that soy and oat bran increase blood flow to the heart, those studies did not look at the heart directly, Dr. Allgood told Reuters Health.

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