Plant Sterols and Plant Stanols and Liver Inflammation

Summary

As the prevalence of obesity is reaching epidemic proportions, the prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), including non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), increases concomitantly and becomes a major global health hazard. Successful pharmacological interventions to treat or prevent NASH are not available and so far only weight loss has clear benefits, but sustained weight-loss is difficult to achieve on the longer-term. We recently demonstrated in mice that plant sterol and stanol ester consumption inhibited the development of liver inflammation, which needs to be validated in humans in a translational approach. In the current proposed pilot study, the effect of consuming plant sterol or plant stanol esters on biopsy proven liver inflammation will be investigated in NAFLD patients.

The objective is to assess the effect of consuming plant sterol or plant stanol esters (3 grams/day) for 12 months on biopsy proven liver inflammation in NAFLD patients.

This study is a randomized, placebo-controlled, double blinded pilot study with a run-period of 2 weeks, an intervention period of 12 months and a wash-out period of 1 month.

The study population consists of 15 patients with biopsy-proven liver inflammation, aged 18-75 years.

All subjects will start a run-in period of two weeks during which they consume daily 20 grams of control margarine after which they will be randomly allocated to consume 20 grams control margarine or plant sterol or plant stanol enriched margarine on a daily basis for a period of 12 months. The primary outcome parameter in this study is biopsy proven liver inflammation.

Conditions

• Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Interventions

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

Plant sterol-enriched margarine

Margarine enriched with plant sterol esters

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

Plant stanol-enriched margarine

Margarine enriched with plant stanol esters

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

Control margarine

Margarine without any addition

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Unilever R&D

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• Raisio Group

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• BASF

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• Maastricht University Medical Center

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jogchum Plat, Prof. · Maastricht University Medical Centre

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

TRIPLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

75 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-05-04

Primary Completion

2019-10-31

Completion

2019-12-31

Countries

• Netherlands

Study Locations