Long-term consumption of fermented dairy products over 6 months increases HDL cholesterol.

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of the hypocholesterolaemic effect of yoghurt supplemented with Lactobacillus acidophilus 145 and Bifidobacterium longum 913 in women.

DESIGN: The cross-over study consisted of three periods (7 weeks each): first period, control yoghurt for all 29 women; second period, probiotic yoghurt for 18 women, control yoghurt for 11 women; third period, the reverse of that in the second period.

SETTING: Department of Nutritional Physiology, Institute of Nutritional Science, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena.

SUBJECTS: Twenty-nine healthy women, aged 19-56 y. Fifteen of these were normocholesterolaemic and 14 women were hypercholesterolaemic.

INTERVENTION: Yoghurt (300 g) daily containing 3.5% fat and starter cultures of Streptococcus thermophilus and L. lactis. Probiotic yoghurt was the control yoghurt enriched with L. acidophilus 145, B. longum 913 and 1% oligofructose (synbiotic).

RESULTS: The mean serum concentration of total cholesterol and the LDL cholesterol was not influenced by the synbiotic (P>0.05). The HDL concentration increased significantly by 0.3 mmol/l (P=0.002). The ratio of LDL/HDL cholesterol decreased from 3.24 to 2.48 (P=0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: The long-term daily consumption of 300 g yoghurt over a period of 21 weeks (control and synbiotic) increased the serum concentration of HDL cholesterol and lead to the desired improvement of the LDL/HDL cholesterol ratio.