Researchers at Georgia State University have found that a plant-based diet can prevent and reverse a form of heart disease in rats with high blood pressure. The study, conducted by the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State, was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The research focused on coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD), a condition where small blood vessels that supply the heart are damaged. CMD is linked to hypertension and can result in chest pain, hospitalizations, heart failure, and death. The condition affects women more severely than men.
Current treatments for CMD are only moderately effective, leading researchers to explore new approaches. This study is among the first to examine how diet might help treat CMD.
“We found that a plant-based diet both prevented the development of CMD and reversed established CMD in hypertensive rats, which translates well to the clinical setting,” said Rami S. Najjar, corresponding author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at Emory University School of Medicine’s Division of Cardiology.
“Interestingly, the beneficial effects of the plant-based diet in CMD occurred despite the persistence of hypertension, showing that the diet was having a targeted effect on the small blood vessels of the heart,” Najjar explained. “We believe this effect occurred due to improved function of blood vessel cells, counteracting the damaging effects of hypertension. When these cells are damaged, blood vessels in the heart contract and blood cannot flow well, the cause of chest pain in humans with CMD. However, the plant-based diet rescued the function of these cells, allowing blood vessels to dilate normally again. This is one of the first studies to show that diet can treat CMD. These exciting results support clinical trials to test plant-based diets in human CMD, and we hope to do this soon.”
In their experiment, female hypertensive rats were fed either a control refined diet without plant foods or a plant-based diet containing 28 percent fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes over six months. Both diets had matched nutrients except for higher antioxidants in the plant-based group. After six months some rats on the control diet were switched to a plant-based regimen after developing CMD.
Researchers assessed CMD using coronary flow reserve measurements—a method also used clinically—and cardiac MRI imaging at Georgia State’s Advanced Translational Imaging Facility.
Other authors included Yanling Wang, Vu Ngo, Juan P. Tejada and Andrew T. Gewirtz from Georgia State; Nedumangalam Hekmatyar from Georgia State’s imaging facility; Hannah Lail, Jessica Danh, Desiree Wanders and Rafaela Feresin from Georgia State’s Department of Nutrition and Chemistry; as well as Puja Mehta from Emory University School of Medicine.
Funding for this work came from Najjar’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative postdoctoral grant through USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
The full study is available online at https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/JAHA.125.045515.
