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Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854
* Department of Human Nutrition, Wageningen Agricultural University, 6703 HD Wageningen, The Netherlands
Department of Laboratory Animal Science, Utrecht University, 3584 CM Utrecht, The Netherlands
Oil from coffee beans contains the diterpenes cafestol and kahweol, which greatly elevate cholesterol in humans. Consumption of 0.03 g coffee oil (0.86 mg cafestol and 1.04 mg kahweol)/kg body wt raised serum cholesterol by 1.27 mmol/L in volunteers. We fed coffee oil from this same batch to cebus and rhesus monkeys. Two groups of eight cebus monkeys were fed a purified diet containing 0.5% coffee oil or placebo oil (sunflower plus palm oil, 3:2, wt/wt) for 2 x seven and a half weeks in a crossover design. The daily intake of the coffee oil was 0.18 g (5.13 mg cafestol and 6.21 mg kahweol)/kg body wt, or sixfold that in the human study. Coffee oil did not affect plasma cholesterol or triglyceride concentrations compared with the placebo oil. Two groups of three rhesus monkeys were fed a commercial diet containing either 0.5% coffee oil or 0.5% placebo oil for 2 x 6 wk in a crossover design. The daily intake of coffee oil was 0.20 g (5.70 mg cafestol and 6.90 mg kahweol)/kg body wt. Again, there was no effect of coffee oil on plasma cholesterol or triglyceride concentrations. Contrary to the findings in human studies, coffee oil had no impact on plasma alanine aminotransferase activity in nonhuman primates. The cholesterol-raising effect of diterpenes from coffee oil, present in boiled coffee, seems to be specific for human primates.
KEY WORDS: coffee coffee oil monkeys cholesterol lipoproteins
1 Supported by a grant from The Netherlands Heart Foundation through grant no. 900.562.091 of The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and a grant from the International Foundation for the Promotion of Nutrition Research and Nutrition Education (ISFE).
2 The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USC section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
3 To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Manuscript received 31 August 1994. Revision accepted 14 March 1995.
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