Reduction of serum cholesterol in postmenopausal women with previous myocardial infarction and cholesterol malabsorption induced by Dietary sitostanol ester margarine : Women and Dietary sitostanol

Reduction of serum cholesterol decreases mortality in primary and especially in secondary prevention. We investigated how effectively postmenopausal women with a previous myocardial infarction reduced their serum cholesterol with dietary means by using sitostanol ester rapeseed oil margarine, alone and in combination with statins, and to what extent cholesterol metabolism was affected. The first study group consisted of 22 randomly chosen women with angiographically documented coronary artery disease. Baseline studies on home diet were followed by double-blind, randomized, cross-over studies on margarine without and with sitostanol (3 g/d) ester for 7 weeks in random order. A second group of 10 women on simvastatin consumed sitostanol ester margarine for 12 weeks. Sitostanol ester margarine lowered serum total cholesterol by 13% (P