Scientists in the US have looked into the mechanisms behind the protective effects of lowbush blueberries on cardiovascular disease. Lowbush blueberries have already been shown to inhibit the growth of atherosclerotic lesions in the aorta of mice, however, the mechanism of this action is not fully understood.
In their paper, Xianli Wu and co-workers from Arkansas, US, found that when blueberries were incorporated into the diet at 1% they were capable of inhibiting expression of scavenger receptors CD36 and SR-A in peritoneal macrophages of apoE deficient mice. This was proposed to be due to the down-regulation of PPAR-gamma receptor and a reduction in its endogenous ligands. CD36 and SR-A scavenger receptors have been shown to play a significant role in the development of atherosclerosis.
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Lowbush blueberries inhibit scavenger receptors CD36 and SR-A expression and attenuate foam cell formation in ApoE-deficient mice, Chenghui Xie, Jie Kang, Jin-Ran Chen, Oxana P. Lazarenko, Matthew E. Ferguson, Thomas M. Badger, Shanmugam Nagarajanad and Xianli Wu, Food Funct., 2011, DOI: 10.1039/c1fo10136f
