Policosanol: it raises cane against heart disease, and more

Better Nutrition, April, 2005 by Kim Schoenhals

The critics agree: Policosanol is a compound that has the potential to lower the risk of heart disease. It is believed to affect several aspects of heart health, including cholesterol, obesity and platelet aggregation, according to a report published in the November 2003 Nutrition Reviews. The authors also commented on the fact that policosanol is as effective against high cholesterol as statin drugs.

In addition to lowering cholesterol, policosanol may combat obesity according to a Cuban trial published in 2004 in the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The researchers noted significant reductions in LDL, "bad" cholesterol, (31.1 percent) and total cholesterol (20.1 percent), as well as increases in HDL, "good" cholesterol, (24.6 percent) after 3 years of treatment. They also noted moderate weight reductions over the course of the study.

Another effect of policosanol is its ability to reduce platelet aggregation, or the clumping of platelets that lead to blood clots. Researchers at the National Center for Scientific Research Cubanacan in Havana noted that policosanol has anti-platelet effects in both healthy subjects and those with abnormal concentrations of lipids in their blood, which they explain in the October 2002 Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology and Physiology.

Because of this, investigators at Cuba's Medical Surgical Research Center in Havana hypothesized that policosanol might be effective for intermittent claudication (leg pain due to impaired blood flow). In their study, published in the July/August 2004 issue of Angiology, patients took either ticlopidine or policosanol for 20 weeks. Policosanol was as effective as the drug for improving walking distances.

Women's Health

Researchers in Argentina enrolled 56 postmenopausal women in a study, which was reported in a 2001 issue of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology Research. The women, who had high cholesterol despite being on a lipid-lowering diet for 6 weeks before study enrollment, took either a placebo or policosanol for 16 weeks. Compared to the baseline and the control group, those taking policosanol experienced significant reductions in both total cholesterol and LDL as well as increases in HDL.

And a study published in 2004 in Drugs Under Experimental and Clinical Research showed beneficial effects of dietary policosanol in an animal model of menopause. Researchers reported policosanol prevented bone loss and reduced bone resorption over a 3-month period.