To be presented during the
American Heart Association Meeting
Sweeney Convention Center
Santa Fe, N.M.
20-Mar-98
#P64 -- 4:00 p.m. -- Estrogen from a soybean diet?
Alternative therapy looks promising. Soy proteins contain "phytoestrogens" -- biochemical cousins of the female hormone that are a possible alternative therapy to protect against artery disease. In a new 3-year study, postmenopausal cynomolgus monkeys were fed an artery disease-causing diet. Monkeys receiving the soybean estrogens had less wall thickening in their common iliac arteries than other animals given soy protein from which the phytoestrogens had been removed. But there was even less artery thickening in a third group of monkeys getting a traditional form of estrogen replacement therapy. Soy phytoestrogens, however, appeared equally effective as ERT in preventing artery disease progression. So whether one therapy turns out to be "more robust" than the other remains to be seen, researchers say.
Mary S. Anthony, Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, N.C.: (336) 716 -1572.
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