The effects of cashew nut intake on lipid profile and blood pressure: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

•Dyslipidemia and hypertension are important risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD).•Cashew nut intake has favorable effect on blood pressure.•Cashew nut intake has not a significant effect on lipid profile. Dyslipidemia and hypertension are important risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Some studies have suggested that the consumption of nuts may reduce CVD risk. The present systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to investigate the efficacy of cashew nut consumption on lipid profile and blood pressure. PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science and Cochrane Library were systematically searched to identify randomized control trials (RCTs) examining the effects of cashew nut intake on serum triglycerides (TG), high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C), low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), serum total cholesterol (TC), systolic blood pressure (SBP) or diastolic blood pressure (DBP) until 15 November 2019. A random-effects model was used to pool weighted mean difference (WMD) and 95 % confidence intervals (CI). Potential publication bias was assessed using Egger’s test. Sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the impact of each individual study on the pooled results. A meta-analysis on 392 participants showed that cashew nut consumption had no significant effects on lipid profile and DBP. However, there was a significant reduction in SBP (WMD = -3.39, 95 % CI = [-6.13, -0.65], P = 0.01, I2 = 0.0 %) in the group receiving cashew nut compared to the controls. There was no significant publication bias in the meta-analysis. A sensitivity analysis showed that omitting each study did not change the significance of results. This meta-analysis demonstrated that cashew nut consumption might reduce SBP but has no effects on lipid profile and DBP.