March 24/Lund, Sweden/Cardiovascular Device Liability Week -- According to recent research published in the British Journal of Nutrition, "Cholesterol-lowering effects of oats have been demonstrated in both animals and human subjects. However, the crucial properties of oat-containing diets that determine their health effects need to be further investigated to optimize their use."
"A mouse model would be a valuable tool, but few such studies have been published to date. We investigated the effects of oat bran on plasma cholesterol and lipoproteins in two substrains of C57BL/6 mice. Western diet was made atherogenic by the addition of 0.8 % cholesterol and 0.1 % cholic acid. After four weeks on atherogenic diet, total plasma cholesterol had increased from 1.86-2-53 to 3.77-4-40mmol/l. In C57BL/6NCrl mice, inclusion of 27% and 40% oat bran reduced total plasma cholesterol by 19% and 24 %, respectively, reduced the shift from HDL to LDL + VLDL and caused increased fecal cholesterol excretion. There was no effect of oat bran on plasma levels of the inflammatory markers fibrinogen, serum amyloid A or TNF-alpha. Contrary to findings in C57BL/6NCrl mice, there was no sustained effect of oat bran (27% or 40 %) on plasma cholesterol in C57BL/6JBomTac mice after four weeks of feeding. Thus, C57BL/6NCrl mice fed an atherogenic diet are a good model for studies of physiological effects of oats, whereas a substrain derived from C57BL/6J, raised in a different breeding environment and likely possessing functional genetic differences from C57BL/6N, is considerably less responsive to oats," wrote K.E. Andersson and colleagues, Lund University.