The effect of soy protein with or without isoflavones relative to milk protein on plasma lipids in hypercholesterolemic postmenopausal women.

Study answer

What this study found

The isoflavone-containing soy protein arm produced greater lipid lowering than the soy protein with trace isoflavones arm, but neither soy regimen showed a significant advantage over the milk-protein control. At 12 weeks, the between-soy-arm differences were -0.02 mmol/L and -0.27 mmol/L for total cholesterol and -0.09 mmol/L and -0.38 mmol/L for LDL cholesterol, with pairwise comparisons significant at P = 0.01. End-of-study LDL cholesterol was 3.8 ± 0.8 mmol/L in Soy- and 3.5 ± 0.5 mmol/L in Soy+, compared with baseline values of 3.9 ± 0.6 mmol/L in both groups. Overall, all groups showed…

Study & population

This was a 3-arm, randomized dietary supplement trial in postmenopausal women with moderate hypercholesterolemia.

Intervention

Participants received 42 g/day of protein by mouth for 12 weeks, given as 2 packets/day (21 g protein per packet) mixed with 240 mL liquid.

Key limitation

The trial was short, and the available summary does not report arm-specific sample sizes, limiting precision assessment.

View full study detailsView sourceOpen PDF

Original abstract