Effect of dietary advanced glycation end products on inflammation and cardiovascular risks in healthy overweight adults: a randomised crossover trial

Estifanos Baye,Arul Earnest,Maximilian Pj De Courten,Josephine M Forbes,Sanjeeva Ranasinha,Barbora De Courten,Karen Walker

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-04214-6

Abstract

Diets high in advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are thought to be detrimental to cardiovascular health. However, there remains uncertainty about the beneficial effect of a low AGE diet on cardiovascular risk factors and inflammatory markers in overweight individuals. We thus performed a randomised, double blind, crossover trial to determine whether consumption of low AGE diets reduce inflammation and cardiovascular risks in overweight and obese otherwise healthy adults. All participants (n = 20) consumed low and high AGE diets alternately for two weeks and separated by a four week washout period. Low AGE diets did not change systolic (p = 0.2) and diastolic blood pressure (p = 0.3), mean arterial pressure (p = 0.8) and pulse pressure (p = 0.2) compared to high AGE diets. Change in total cholesterol (p = 0.3), low-density lipoprotein (p = 0.7), high-density lipoprotein (p = 0.2), and triglycerides (p = 0.4) also did not differ and there was no difference in inflammatory markers: interleukin-6 (p = 0.6), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (p = 0.9), tumour necrosis factor α (p = 0.2), C-reactive protein (p = 0.6) and nuclear factor kappa beta (p = 0.2). These findings indicate that consumption of low AGE diets for two weeks did not improve the inflammatory and cardiovascular profiles of overweight and obese adults.

Highlights

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are formed endogenously from non-enzymatic reactions of amino acids with sugars[1]
The present study aimed to measure the effect of consuming low advanced glycation end products (AGEs) diets for 2 weeks on markers of inflammation and cardiovascular risk factors in healthy obese and overweight individuals
No significant difference was found in changes in blood pressure, plasma lipid levels or inflammatory markers (CRP, TNFα, monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1), interleukin 6 (IL-6), NFκβ activity) between low and high AGE diets

Summary

Introduction

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are formed endogenously from non-enzymatic reactions of amino acids with sugars[1]. In some studies involving healthy obese individuals, low AGE diets reduced inflammatory markers[11, 16, 17] but did not change plasma lipid levels[17, 18] or blood pressure[17, 19]. Cai and colleagues reported a reduction in oxidised low-density lipoprotein after 6 weeks of consumption of low AGE diets (5 fold lower in AGE content) in patients with T2DM23 In all these studies, test and control diets were either not matched for energy and macronutrient content or it was not stated whether similar macronutrient content was achieved between the diets, which could potentially influence the results[24]. We conducted analyses of secondary outcomes of the trial and investigated if dietary AGEs improve blood pressure, plasma lipid profiles and inflammatory markers

Methods

Results

Conclusion