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Garlic study may help give herb a boost The San Diego Union - Tribune; San Diego, Calif.
Apr 21, 2003; JACK WILLIAMS
Abstract: Dr. Matthew Budoff, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, was impressed enough by the results of an aged garlic extract in a study he conducted on 19 cardiac patients that he hopes to expand it. This time with federal funding and as many as 300 participants. Budoff's trial -- using Kyolic aged garlic extract in liquid form, indistinguishible from a placebo -- found a reduction in calcified plaque in subjects on the garlic regimen. The calcified plaque, measured by a high-tech scanner, can cause heart attacks. To further control his study, Budoff discouraged all patients from eating any garlic. He chose an organic liquid form because it neither contains nor produces odor and is produced without heat -- which can compromise the active ingredients in a garlic supplement.
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For all the medicinal and mystical qualities attributed to garlic -- including warding off vampires -- scientific studies of the pungent herb are nothing to take your breath away.
Yet the scrutiny of garlic in its dietary and supplemental forms persists -- and at a fairly remarkable pace. If garlic is, indeed, nature's antibiotic, the conclusive evidence may be within sniffing distance.
Cases in point: one study under way in Palo Alto, and another presented last week by a UCLA researcher at the Experimental Biology 2003 conference in San Diego.
Dr. Matthew Budoff, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, was impressed enough by the results of an aged garlic extract in a study he conducted on 19 cardiac patients that he hopes to expand it. This time with federal funding and as many as 300 participants.
"I didn't expect such a small study to yield such positive results," Budoff admitted before his San Diego presentation. "I was hoping to see a trend, but the trend was so strong it became a statistical finding.
"We can say there likely is a benefit. We need to confirm it and see how big it is."
Budoff's trial -- using Kyolic aged garlic extract in liquid form, indistinguishible from a placebo -- found a reduction in calcified plaque in subjects on the garlic regimen. The calcified plaque, measured by a high-tech scanner, can cause heart attacks.
Another positive result was a reduction in homocysteine levels in the blood, a cardiac risk factor.
To further control his study, Budoff discouraged all patients from eating any garlic. He chose an organic liquid form because it neither contains nor produces odor and is produced without heat -- which can compromise the active ingredients in a garlic supplement.
Those on the supplemental regimen consumed 1,200 mg. of the Kyolic extract per day -- on an empty stomach.
Meanwhile, in Palo Alto, Christopher Gardner is taking on a much more ambitious trial with funding from the National Institutes of Health.
He's enlisting 200 healthy adults with moderately high cholesterol. Six days a week for six months, the volunteers will take one of two popular garlic supplements or eat sandwiches containing garlic.
The objective: to measure the effect of garlic on serum cholesterol.
"These results should help us set the record straight," said Gardner, an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford University.
While many studies have concluded that garlic lowers cholesterol, some have failed to meet rigorous scientific standards. More recent ones produced mixed results, perhaps owing to the variation in supplement potency and the garlic sources.
"We don't know the ideal dose," Budoff said. "There is a lot of variation in food products, too. Freshness, where it's grown, how big the clove is."
Andrew Weil, a natural medicine guru and best-selling author, considers garlic an "antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer and cardiovascular tonic par excellence."
He considers eating two cloves of raw garlic -- in a sandwich or swallowed with apple sauce -- to be "the best home remedy I have found for colds."
Indeed, the applications are as abundant as the recommendations and trials are promising.
"There's a natural bias in academic medicine to not study natural products and to emphasize pharmaceutical products," Budoff said.
"Slowly, we're getting pushed in the right direction."
Providing much of the impetus is the the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, an NIH agency established in 1992 that is providing funding for ongoing studies.
Jack Williams can be reached at (619) 293-1388; by fax at (619) 293-1896; or by e-mail at: jack.williams@uniontrib.com
Sub Title: [1,3 Edition] Column Name: BODY AND SOUL | KEEPING FIT Start Page: D-3
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