Key takeaways:

• Drinking nitrate-rich beetroot juice for 12 weeks lowered blood strain in sufferers with COPD in contrast with nitrate-depleted juice.
• This each day drink additionally improved train capability.

Consuming nitrate-rich beetroot juice each day for 12 weeks resulted in decreased blood strain and higher 6-minute stroll distance in sufferers with COPD in contrast with placebo, in accordance with information revealed in European Respiratory Journal.

“At the end of the study, we found that the blood pressure of people taking the nitrate-rich beetroot juice drink was lower and their blood vessels became less stiff,” Nicholas S. Hopkinson, PhD, professor of respiratory drugs at Imperial College London, mentioned in a press launch from the European Respiratory Society. “The juice also increased how far people with COPD could walk in 6 minutes compared to placebo.”

In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled parallel trial, Hopkinson and colleagues assessed 81 patients with COPD and a house systolic blood strain of 130 mmHg or larger to find out if 70 mL of nitrate-rich beetroot juice (n = 40) per day for 12 weeks positively modified blood strain vs. nitrate-depleted placebo juice (n = 41).

Researchers additionally evaluated 6-minute walk distance, measures of endothelial operate, plasma nitrate and platelet operate between the 2 teams.

Baseline traits of every group have been comparable. Within the entire cohort, not one of the sufferers skilled a critical adversarial occasion; nonetheless, three sufferers (energetic remedy, n = 1; placebo, n = 2) withdrew as a result of the juice was “unpalatable,” in accordance with researchers.

By week 12, sufferers consuming nitrate-rich beetroot juice had larger reductions in systolic blood strain vs. sufferers consuming nitrate-depleted placebo juice (Hodges-Lehmann estimator remedy impact, –4.5 mmHg; 95% CI, –3 to –5.9).

Researchers additionally noticed extra enchancment in 6-minute stroll distance amongst people within the nitrate-rich juice group (+30.04 m; 95% CI, 15.7-44.2). Notably, this measurement was solely collected from 24 sufferers within the nitrate-rich juice group and 20 sufferers within the placebo group.

To assess endothelial operate, researchers used an EndoPAT system (Itamar Medical) and located enhancements in reactive hyperemia index (+0.34; 95% CI, 0.03-0.63) and augmentation index corrected for coronary heart charge 75% (–7.61%; 95% CI, –14.3% to –0.95%) amongst these consuming the nitrate-rich juice vs. the nitrate-depleted placebo juice.

Patients consuming the nitrate-rich juice additionally had a “substantial increase” in plasma nitrate on the finish of the research in contrast with baseline, in accordance with researchers.

Between the 2 teams, researchers didn’t discover any modifications in platelet aggregation.

“This is one of the longest-duration studies in this area so far,” Hopkinson mentioned within the launch. “The results are very promising, but will need to be confirmed in larger, longer-term studies.”

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