Epidemiological Studies on Heart Health

Reporting in the Archives of Internal Medicine (2003) the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study, a population-based study of middle-aged Finnish men on the associations between serum enterolactone level and the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD), concluded that high serum enterolactone level is dose-dependently positively associated with reduced CHD and CVD-related mortality in middle-aged Finnish men1.

In a similar US study (2002) researchers investigated whether dietary estrogens have similar beneficial effects on metabolic cardiovascular risk factors as estrogen therapies used in women. Nine hundred and thirty nine (939) postmenopausal women participating in the Framingham Offspring Study were included in this cross-sectional study. In the highest quartile of isoflavone intake, the mean cardiovascular risk factor metabolic score was 0.43 points lower (95% CI, -0.70 to -0.16) than the lowest quartile. The difference in this score between the extreme quartiles of intake of lignans was -0.55 points (95% CI, -0.82 to -0.28). The study concluded that high intake of lignans in postmenopausal women was associated with a favorable metabolic cardiovascular risk profile2.

In another Finnish study to evaluate evidence that low serum enterolactone concentration might be an independent risk factor for acute coronary events Vanharanta et al (2002) proposed that due to the bi-phenolic structure of enterolactone, along with the parent lignans, could act as an antioxidant and through this contribute to cardiovascular health. The study involving 100 male participants tested the hypothesis that a low serum enterolactone concentration is associated with increased in vivo lipid peroxidation. In a multivariate analytical model, enterolactone persisted as a significant predictor after adjustment for vitamins and other variables, with the strongest associations with F2-isoprostanes. The study results support the hypothesis that low serum enterolactone concentration is associated with enhanced in vivo lipid peroxidation in men3.

In another nested case-control study in middle-aged men the association of serum enterolactone concentration with the risk of acute coronary events was investigated. Enterolactone was measured by time-resolved fluoroimmunoassay in serum from 167 men who had an average 7.7 years of follow-up to an acute coronary event and from 167 control men. Both cases and controls were from a cohort of 2005 men who had no clinical coronary heart disease (CHD) at baseline. The study reported that the healthy men with high serum concentrations of enterolactone had a lower risk of acute coronary events than men with lower concentrations affirming the hypothesis that plant-dominated fibre-rich food lowers the risk of CHD4.