Aged black garlic, which is a whole raw garlic bulb fermented under controlled temperatures and humidity for approximately one month. Its unique aging process helps to increase the number of antioxidant compounds inside each bulb, including polyphenols, flavonoids, and melanoidins, and it has a lengthy history of use in traditional medicine in Asian countries for a number of uses.
 
Pharmactive Biotech recently released its aged black garlic extract, ABG10+, which has now undergone a clinical trial at the Autonomous University of Madrid led by Sara Amor, PhD, and published in the journal Nutrients.
 
In a 16-week study, groups of rats were either fed standard chow, or chow that contained high amounts of fat and sucrose. From week 8 on, half of the high-fat diet rats were treated with Pharmactive’s aged black garlic extract, which resulted in a lower mean caloric intake, body weight, triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, insulin, and leptin serum concentrations and a higher HLD cholesterol than non-treated rats. Additionally, the aged black garlic extract decreased adipose weight, and caused reductions in the obesity-induced vasoconstriction of rats on the high-fat diet. Researchers said that further studies are needed in order to assess the differences in supplement bioavailability between rats and humans.
 
ABG10+ is the first black garlic extract to be standardized to a higher concentration of SAC, via high performance liquid chromatography-based technology, and is produced using the company’s proprietary aging process.
 
“Aged black garlic has been enjoyed for centuries as a culinary delicacy,” Alberto Espinel, head of R&D for Pharmactive, said. “Today, the extract is being increasingly appreciated for its functional qualities and its role in helping maintain healthy heart function. Our studies endorse ABG10+ as a safe and natural ingredient that can promote cardiovascular health via its ability to balance lipid profiles and enhance vascular and cardiac function.”
 
Researchers said that the fact that this study evaluated the results of aged black garlic supplementation in the context of diet-induced obesity made this study the first to do so to their knowledge.
 
“As ABG10+ treatment significantly reduced body weight gain in HFD-fed rats, the improved metabolic and vascular profiles of these animals may be the result of the decrease in body weight,” the authors wrote. “The results derived from this work are relevant as, to our knowledge, they report for the first time the beneficial vascular and metabolic effects of ABG in an obesity context. These findings may help in the search of new natural anti-obesity therapies as an alternative to the traditional pharmacological treatments, that, in general, are related to higher side effects.”
 
These results follow a previous study in 2016, which demonstrated that ABG10+
 showed significant improvements to cardiovascular contraction force, which reduced cellular death in the myocardium. ABG10+ has also been shown to increase the production of nitric oxide, a compound that improves vasodilation and allows a greater flow of nutrients to the heart, thereby helping to prevent ischemic events.