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Yogurt reduces inflammation, cardiometabolic risk

Eating yogurt reduced biomarkers tied to chronic inflammation and the risk for cardiometabolic disease in healthy women who had not reached menopause, according to two recently published studies.

“We hypothesized that premeal yogurt consumption would reduce postprandial biomarkers of metabolic endotoxemia and inflammation and improve metabolism in obese women to a greater extent than in nonobese women given the inherent intestinal barrier dysfunction associated with obesity,” Ruisong Pei, PhD, MS, a department of food science research associate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and colleagues wrote in the Journal of Nutrition.

Researchers randomly assigned 120 premenopausal women to eat 339 g of low-fat yogurt or 324 g of soy pudding for 9 weeks. Half of each group had BMI levels consistent with obesity, the others had BMI levels consistent with being healthy. At week 0 and 9, participants ate 226 g of yogurt or 216 g of soy pudding before a meal consisting of 28 and 30 g of protein, between 56 and 60 g of fat, and 82 g of carbohydrates.

Pei and colleagues found the women with obesity who ate yogurt did not have a postprandial decrease in plasma soluble CD14 at week 0 (P = .0323). All women eating yogurt also had 40% lower lipopolysaccharide-binding protein to plasma soluble CD14 ratio and plasma IL-6 concentration than the women who had the pudding (P < .05).

In addition, the women with obesity who consumed the pudding had postprandial hyperglycemia but the women with obesity who consumed yogurt did not. The women who did not have obesity who ate yogurt had less postprandial hypoglycemia than those who ate the pudding. (P interaction =.0013).

In the second study, which appeared in the British Journal of Nutrition, Pei and colleagues looked at the same group of women but with several different endpoints.

Eating yogurt reduced biomarkers tied to chronic inflammation and the risk for cardiometabolic disease in healthy women who had not reached menopause, according to two recently published studies.

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They found that the women who ate the yogurt, regardless of their weight, had lower TNF-alpha/soluble TNF II levels but higher plasma IgM endotoxin-core antibodies. The women who ate the yogurt and the soy pudding and had obesity had comparable higher plasma 2-arachidonoylglycerol levels after 9 weeks. In addition, the women who ate the yogurt and had obesity had 3% to 6% lower diastolic BP after 3 weeks.

“Eating eight ounces of low-fat yogurt before a meal is a feasible strategy to improve post-meal metabolism and thus may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases,” Pei said in a press release.

“The goal [of future research] is to identify [which compounds in yogurt] and then get human evidence to support their mechanism of action in the body,” Brad Bolling, PhD, an assistant professor in the department of food science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and study co-author, added in the release. “Ultimately, we would like to see these components optimized in foods, particularly for medical situations where it's important to inhibit inflammation through the diet. We think this is a promising approach.” – by Janel Miller

Disclosure: Please see the studies for the authors’ relevant financial disclosures.