Postmenopausal women who eat prunes every day may reap benefits for their bone health, as these nutrient-rich fruits help reduce inflammatory factors that promote osteoporosis, a new study to be presented this week shows. week at the annual meeting of the American Physiological Society (APS) in Experimental Biology 2022, which is being held in Philadelphia (United States).
Osteoporosis deteriorates the bones and makes them brittle and prone to fracture after a slight bump or fall, especially in older adults. In Spain, and according to data from the International Osteoporosis Foundation, 22.6% of women and 6.8% of men who are 50 years of age or older suffer from osteoporosis, a total of 2,945,000 people.
When women go through menopause their estrogen levels drop, and this triggers an increase in inflammation in the body, which can also contribute to bone loss. Previous studies had already shown that polyphenol extracts (vegetable substances with antioxidant and inflammation-reducing properties) present in prunes favor lower levels of oxidative stress and inflammation in osteoclasts, a type of bone cell.
Effects of prunes on bone health after menopause
The new research was conducted by scientists from the Program for Integrative and Biomedical Physiology and the Departments of Nutritional Sciences and Kinesiology at Pennsylvania State University, who looked at the effects of prunes on bone health after menopause. To do this, they divided postmenopausal women with a bone mineral density score defined as low (a marker of osteoporosis) into three groups:
The researchers analyzed blood samples taken from all trial participants before and after the trial and found significant reductions in inflammatory markers in the two groups of women who ate prunes, compared to the control group who did not eat prunes. this food.
“Prunes could be a promising nutritional intervention to prevent the increase in inflammatory mediators observed as part of the aging process”
“Our findings suggest that consuming six to 12 prunes per day may reduce pro-inflammatory mediators that may contribute to bone loss in postmenopausal women. Therefore, prunes could be a promising nutritional intervention to prevent the increase in inflammatory mediators that are often seen as part of the aging process”, says Janhavi Damani, first author of the study.
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