Does Garlic Supplementation Control Blood Pressure in Patients with Severe Coronary Artery Disease? A Clinical Trial Study
What this study found
Garlic did not produce a clear overall blood pressure benefit in the full cohort, but it appeared to help patients who were hypertensive at baseline. In the hypertensive subgroup, systolic BP fell from 135.7 ± 2.96 to 123.5 ± 3.8 with garlic versus 126.4 ± 4 to 129 ± 2.5 with placebo, with adjusted P = 0.005. In the overall cohort, BP changes were small and mixed, with adjusted analyses suggesting a modest systolic effect (adjusted P = 0.04) but no clear diastolic benefit (adjusted P = 0.19). The authors concluded that garlic was well tolerated and could help control BP as an adjunct to…
- Study & population
- Clinical trial in adults with severe coronary artery disease undergoing angioplasty at Rajaei Cardiovascular Medical and Research Center in Tehran, Iran.
- Intervention
- Oral garlic powder tablets, each equal to 400 mg garlic and 1200 µg allicin, were given twice daily for 3 months as an adjunct to standard cardiovascular therapy.
- Key limitation
- Single-center trial with a short 3-month follow-up and limited generalizability to other CAD populations.
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Open PDFOriginal abstract
Background Hypertension is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular morbidities, including coronary artery disease (CAD). Objectives With interest on the important role of hypertension in the progression of CAD, this study was designed to estimate the effect of garlic powder tablets on the blood pressure (BP) in patients with severe CAD. Methods A randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trial was conducted on 56 CAD patients, aged 25 - 75 years old. The patients were randomly divided into two groups: Galois groups (n = 27), receiving garlic powder tablet (400 mg garlic) twice daily and the placebo groups (n = 29), receiving placebo for 3 months. The BP was assessed at baseline and at the end of the study. Results During the 3 months study, in the placebo group, systolic BP (SBP) increased with 6.3 mmHg and diastolic BP (DBP) increased with 4.6 mmHg, changes which were significant. After the 3 months, the effect of garlic on SBP, after adjusting for baseline value, was significant, and this effect was more significant in hypertensive patients. Plasma lipids and lipoproteins did not change significantly in either the garlic or placebo groups, during the study. Tolerability, compliance and acceptability were high in all patients. Conclusions These results demonstrate that treatment with garlic-based drugs can be an effective treatment for controlling BP in CAD patients and has no interaction with other drugs that CAD patients take. Therefore, it may be considered as a safe adjunct treatment for this group of patients.