Long-term consumption of fermented dairy products over 6 months increases HDL cholesterol

Objective: Assessment of the hypocholesterolaemic effect of yoghurt supplemented with Lactobacillus acidophilus 145 and Bifidobacterium longum 913 in women. Design: The cross-over study consisted of three periods (7 weeks each): first period, control yoghurt for all 29 women; second period, probiotic yoghurt for 18 women, control yoghurt for I I women; third period, the reverse of that in the second period. Setting: Department of Nutritional Physiology, Institute of Nutritional Science, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. Subjects: Twenty-nine healthy women, aged 19-56y. Fifteen of these were normocholesterolaemic and 14 women were hypercholesterolaemic. Intervention: Yoghurt (300g) daily containing 3.5% fat and starter cultures of Streptococcus thermophilus and L. lactis. Probiotic yoghurt was the control yoghurt enriched with L. acidophilus 145, B. longum 913 and 1% oligofructose (synbiotic). Results: The mean serum concentration of total cholesterol and the LDL cholesterol was not influenced by the synbiotic (P > 0.05). The HDL concentration increased significantly by 0.3mmol/l (P = 0.002). The ratio of LDL/HDL cholesterol decreased from 3.24 to 2.48 (P = 0.001). Conclusions: The long-term daily consumption of 300g yoghurt over a period of 21 weeks (control and synbiotic) increased the serum concentration of HDL cholesterol and lead to the desired improvement of the LDL/HDL cholesterol ratio.