Tomato and lycopene supplementation and cardiovascular risk factors: A systematic review and meta-analysis

What a waste. We have known for years that lycopene and tomatoes are good for you. What we need is amounts per body weights to keep some amount of lycopene circulating in the bloodstream. Have you no previous experience reading research and determining the next steps? The stupid - it burns.

Lycopene in tomatoes reduces stroke risk by more than 50%  July 2013 

Tomato Pill’ Improves Blood Vessel Function  June 2014 

Health effects of lycopene, a carotenoid found mainly from tomato products Aug. 2016 

Serum lycopene decreases the risk of stroke in men: A population-based follow-up study.  Oct. 2012

https://www.mdlinx.com/internal-medicine/medical-news-article/2017/01/19/tomato-lycopene-intervention-cardiovascular-risk-factors/7012407/?

Atherosclerosis, 01/19/2017

Cheng HM, et al. – This study suggests a positive influence of tomato products and lycopene supplementation on blood lipids, blood pressure and endothelial function. These outcomes support the development of promising individualised nutritional strategies involving tomatoes to tackle cardiovascular diseases (CVD).

Methods

• Researchers searched 3 databases including Medline, Web of science, and Scopus from inception to August 2016.
• Inclusion criteria were: intervention randomised controlled trials reporting effects of tomato products and lycopene supplementation on CV risk factors among adult subjects >18 years of age.
• The outcomes of interest included blood lipids (total-, HDL-, LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, oxidised-LDL), endothelial function (flow-mediated dilation (FMD), pulse wave velocity (PWV)) and blood pressure (BP) inflammatory factors (CRP, IL-6) and adhesion molecules (ICAM-1).
• They used random-effects models to determine the pooled effect sizes.

Results

• Data showed that out of 1189 publications identified, 21 fulfilled inclusion criteria and were meta-analysed.
• Overall, findings demonstrated that interventions supplementing tomato were associated with significant reductions in LDL-cholesterol (-0.22 mmol/L; p = 0.006), IL-6 (standardised mean difference -0.25; p = 0.03), and improvements in FMD (2.53%; p = 0.01); while lycopene supplementation reduced Systolic-BP (-5.66 mmHg; p = 0.002).
• Additionally, it was noted that no other outcome was significantly affected by these interventions.

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