Cranberries over the years have been identified with preventing or ameliorating urinary tract infections and playing a positive role gum disease, ulcers and even cancer.

Recent work showed that cranberries contain naturally derived compounds ( antioxidants, flavonoids, and polyphenols ) that may help protect against heart disease.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine studied the effects of taking cranberry juice powder regularly over six months and found a pronounced improvement in the vascular function in subjects with high blood cholesterol and atherosclerosis.

" Since the abnormal functioning of blood vessels is an important component of heart disease, finding ways to improve vascular function in patients with high cholesterol and atherosclerosis is critical to helping protect these patients from consequences such as heart attack or stroke," according to lead researcher Kris Kruse-Elliott.

" The value of fruits and vegetables in our diet has recently been an area of intense research and studies like this help us to understand the specific mechanisms by which the nutrients we consume can protect against heart disease," Kruse-Elliott said. She said that the next steps are " to determine what specific components of cranberries are most important to the improvements in vascular function that we observed, exactly how they modify blood vessel relaxation, and how they can be most easily consumed as part of the diet."

Kruse-Elliott explained: " We're lucky to have a unique animal model for atherosclerosis – familial hypercholesterolemic ( FH ) swine, whose genetic defect causes them to spontaneously develop high blood cholesterol leading to atherosclerosis and vascular dysfunction by eight months of age, very similar to the way human beings do." She noted that the FH pigs' blood vessels don't function normally, such as not relaxing well, compared with normal pigs.

" However when the FH pigs were fed cranberry juice powder, made from whole cranberries, for six months their vessels acted more like normal pigs, Kruse-Elliott said. FH pigs who didn't get cranberry juice powder had "significantly less vascular relaxation" than either normal or cranberry-fed pigs. The pigs on the cranberry juice powder diet received 150g/kg per day.

Source: American Physiological Society, 2005


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