For centuries allium vegetables like garlic, onions and leeks have apparently played a pivotal role in the food and medicine terrain. Well the benefits of including allium vegetables into the daily diet may have now increased, thanks to the following article. Investigators from the King’s College London and the University of East Anglia claim that a diet high in allium vegetables leads to lower threat of developing hip osteoarthritis.
It seems that garlic not only protects against osteoarthritis, but its compound can also help develop treatments for the condition. In order to conduct the study, investigators scrutinized around 1,000 healthy female twins. Majority of the participants did not have any signs of arthritis. A detailed assessment of the diet patterns followed by the twins was thoroughly examined along with x-ray images. These images captured the extent of early osteoarthritis in the participants’ hips, knees as well as spine.
“While we don’t yet know if eating garlic will lead to high levels of this component in the joint, these findings may point the way towards future treatments and prevention of hip osteoarthritis. It has been known for a long time that there is a link between body weight and osteoarthritis. Many researchers have tried to find dietary components influencing the condition, but this is the first large scale study of diet in twins. If our results are confirmed by follow-up studies, this will point the way towards dietary intervention or targeted drug therapy for people with osteoarthritis,†highlighted Dr. Frances Williams, lead author from the Department of Twin Research at King’s College London.
On completion of the analysis, it appeared that those on a healthy diet with high intake of fruit and vegetables, especially alliums such as garlic, have less evidence of early osteoarthritis in the hip joint. For analyzing the potential protective effect of alliums, experts inspected compounds present in garlic. The compound diallyl disulphide supposedly limits the amount of cartilage-damaging enzymes when introduced to a human cartilage cell-line in the laboratory. Therefore, it can be asserted that diallyl disulphide is a beneficial compound in designing future treatments for tackling osteoarthritis.
The study is published in the BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders journal.