Garlic Can't Scare Away Cholesterol

B O S T O N, Sept. 19 -- Garlic may scare away vampires, but its powers apparently don’t extend to chasing away cholesterol.

The aromatic spice that many hoped would cut their cholesterol levels as a pill or as a pizza topping has a negligible effect, according to a comprehensive review of the research.

Researchers at Britain’s University of Exeter have re-examined 13 studies that previously looked at whether garlic could help patients with elevated cholesterol levels. Their conclusion? For this population, sniff researchers, using garlic is of “questionable value.”

The medicinal use of garlic dates back to ancient times. More recently,garlic has been hailed as the “aspirin of the ’90s” ever since early studies linked it to blood-thinning and cholesterol-lowering properties.

Researchers noticed impressive longevity in populations with garlic-heavy diets decades ago, leading to the hypothesis that garlic’s active ingredient, allicin, might play a role in lowering high cholesterol levels, a marker for future heart disease.

Early research seemed to back this up, and two comprehensive reviews completed in the mid-’90s, known as “meta-analyses,” or investigations that analyze data compiled from already published studies, seemed to confirm that garlic reduced cholesterol levels by at least 9 percent to as much as 12 percent.

Research Called Foul But some scientists criticized the research, saying the poor quality of the included studies cast a foul odor on the results. Since then, several major follow-up studies have failed to find significant benefits of garlic on cholesterol levels.

Now, this meta-analysis of more current research, published in the current issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, yet again confirms those poor results, finding that garlic produced only a 5 percent average drop in cholesterol levels, at best.

And when looking at the half dozen studies the researchers considered most reliable, the effect vanished completely.