The new Vitafoods product zone showcases innovative products that have come onto the market in the last 12 months.
OptiBiotix’s LPLDL probiotic cholesterol reduction supplement is currently available as a tablet.
Research into OptiBiotix’s LPLDL probiotic, presented at Probiota in early 2017, demonstrated that it is a safe natural ingredient that reduces blood pressure and cholesterol, key determinates of cardiovascular risk.
The probiotic was found to reduce LDL cholesterol by up to 13.9% and blood pressure by 5.1%.
The parallel, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised study was done by Glenn Gibson, Professor of Food Microbiology, Head of Food Microbial Sciences at University of Reading.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the global leading cause of death: more people die from CVD than from any other cause.
High blood pressure is also a major public health issue and the single biggest risk factor for stroke, and plays a significant role in heart attacks.
The combination of high blood pressure and cholesterol deposition may lead to the chronic inflammation and hardening of the walls of the blood vessels, which greatly increases the probability of suffering a cardiovascular event.
Recent research, presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress 2016, has shown that a reduction of both LDL cholesterol and blood pressure can reduce the lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease by almost 90%.
Stephen O’Hara, CEO of OptiBiotix, commented: “The ability to create designer active ingredients that can modify an individual’s microbiome to improve health places OptiBiotix at the forefront of global microbiome research and product development. The development of our LPLDL probiotic product makes cholesterol reduction through microbiome modulation a reality.”
LPLDL is a naturally occurring strain of the bacterial species Lactobacillus plantarum, which acts by impacting the metabolism of bile acids in the intestine.
Lactobacilli are common components of the human intestinal microbiome and have long been used as probiotics. LPLDL was selected as the optimal bacterial strain for cholesterol reduction from a collection of more than 4000 microbial candidates using OptiBiotix’s OptiScreen proprietary technology platform.