05.04.12
A new, one-year, double-blind controlled clinical study shows that cacao-flavonoids and soy isoflavones can significantly improve biomarkers of CVD risk in postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes. The trial, conducted by Peter J. Curtis, Ph.D., et al, funded by a UK based charity, Diabetes UK, and supported by Frutarom Ltd., Israel, and Barry Callebaut, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality cocoa and chocolate products, was published February, 2012, in Diabetes Care. The purpose of the study was to assess the effect of dietary flavonoids on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes on established statin and hypoglycemic therapy.The clinical trialconsisted of 93 medicated postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes. Subjects were randomly allocated to consume 27 g/day (split dose) of flavonoid-enriched chocolate (Barry Callebaut ACTICOA chocolatecontaining 850 mg flavan-3-ols [90 mg epicatechin] and 100 mg of isoflavones [aglycone equivalents)]/day) or a matched placebo.At the conclusion of this trial, the combined one-year intervention with flavan-3-ols and isoflavones resulted in a significant improvement in biomarkers of CVD risk in postmenopausal type 2 diabetic patients, compared to placebo. These data highlight the additional benefit of dietary flavonoids to standard drug therapy in managing CVD risk in this group of patients.