A study reveals the anti-inflammatory properties of virgin olive oil

• The
  results of this research work have confirmed the beneficial effects of
  olive oil for health and have revealed that the consumption of this
  variety modulates down inflammatory mediators in healthy people

Researchers
from the Hospital Universitario Reina Sofía de Córdoba (University
Hospital Reina Sofía of Córdoba, Spain) have carried out a study in
order to determine the influence of the micronutrients of certain fats
on cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or cancer, and if their
consumption might modify the inflammatory process in healthy people. To
this end, they have studied the consumption in diets with different
fatty composition, based on extra virgin olive oil, nuts and butter,
observing that extra virgin olive oil modulate on a downward trend
healthy individuals’ inflammatory levels, whereas a diet rich in nuts
has an intermediate effect and the diet rich in butter exerts a
damaging effect on inflammation mediators.

High-impact international scientific journals specialized in the nutrition field such as the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism or Atherosclerosis
have already echoed the results of this work carried out by the Lipids
and Atherosclerosis Unit of the Reina Sofía University Hospital, under
the direction of doctors Francisco Pérez Jiménez and José López
Miranda, with the collaboration of the Laboratory of Experimental
Nephrology and Vascular Pathology of the Jiménez Díaz Foundation.

During
the development of this research work, the persons in charge of the
study have observed that olive oil reduces the plasmatic concentration
of other molecules which express in the walls of blood vessels and also
favour inflammation, confirming the incidence of consumption in the
improvement of the inflammatory process. The researchers attribute this
new beneficial effect of olive oil, at least in part, to the high
presence of micronutrients and, despite the fact that at present we are
ignorant of the effects of most of them, they have suggested
possibility that they might act due to a direct effect, similar to that
of anti-inflammatory drugs.

Antioxidant properties
The Lipids and Atherosclerosis Unit of the Reina Sofía Hospital is
working at present in the search for beneficial effects related to the
usual consumption of virgin olive oil. According to Doctor Pablo Pérez
Martínez, “the main property of olive oil is its richness of
antioxidants, which makes it a unique fat. Therefore, we must clarify
which is the added value of its components, as that is the only way to
establish that a healthy diet must contain olive oil as its main fat.”
According to Doctor Pérez Martínez, “olive oil is a key food in the
Mediterranean diet, as it is its main source of fats and provides it
with high-nutritional-value micro-components.” According to the
researcher, a diet based on olive oil reduces bad cholesterol (LDL)
brings arterial pressure down, improves diabetes control and reduces
the trend to suffer from thrombosis. In the last years, and thanks to
the new technologies, we have other oils suitable for human nutrition
with a similar fatty composition, such as those extracted from certain
seeds with high varieties of oleic, like sunflower, soya and canola
oil. However, according to Doctor Pérez Martínez, such oils present an
essential difference with the oil extracted from olives, as “olive oil
is a natural juice, which contains hundreds of non-fatty
micro-components of biological interest, such as vitamin E, carotenes,
scalene, chlorophyll and, especially, phenolic compounds”.

Micronutrients benefits
According
to Doctor Pérez Martínez, the results of this study confirm once again
the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, “a model of feeding with a high
monounsaturated fat content from virgin olive oil, able to induce a
wide range of biological effects on the cardiovascular system”. In
addition, according to the researcher, the most recent studies are
gradually defining that some benefits depend on or can be favoured with
the consumption of olive oil rich in micro-components, like in the case
of extra virgin olive oil and its anti-inflammatory properties, which
are a new added value, together with the rest of well-known beneficial
effects

Contact:
Dr Pablo Pérez Martínez. Lipids and Atherosclerosis Unit.
Reina Sofía University Hospital. Córdoba (Spain)
Phone number. +34 607464673. E-mail. [email protected]