Study: Red Clover Stops/Minimizes Bone Loss
Hail the power of plants…in particular, red clover.
New research from Denmark has found that red clover extract—rich in isoflavones and probiotics—can lessen or even halt bone loss.
The work, “Combined bioavailable isoflavones and probiotics improve bone status and estrogen metabolism in postmenopausal osteopenic women: a randomized controlled trial,” appeared in September 2017 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Per Bendix Jeppesen, Ph.D. with the Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark and co-author on the study, told OTW, “I am mainly working with drug discovery in especially lifestyle diseases. We got in contact with an organic farmer at the port of Denmark, who introduced some knowledge about the estrogen effects of red clover. He asked if we would be interested to test this substance, which is fermented in a special way, so the bioavailability is increased. We looked into the literature and found the area very interesting, and set up different clinical trials.”
The authors wrote, “This was a 12-mo, double-blind, parallel design, placebo-controlled, randomized controlled trial of 78 postmenopausal osteopenic women supplemented with calcium (1200 mg/d), magnesium (550 mg/d), and calcitriol (25 mg/d) given either RCE (60 mg isoflavone aglycones/d and probiotics) or a masked placebo [control (CON)].”
Dr. Jeppesen commented to OTW, “We have tested this in two different populations, one group was women with only menopause symptoms and the other group was women with osteopenia. In both cases we got impressive results, where we could see that we were able to treat menopause symptoms and bone loss. We stopped or minimized bone loss in the two different research populations.”
“As we know that the conventional treatment contains risk for side effects, we find the treatment with fermented red clover extract very interesting. It has shown no side effect and even may protect against cancer according to the last report from the EFSA [European Food Safety Authority].”
“We will recommend it to be used especially for women with menopause symptoms and who have risk for a high resorption of bone tissue (bone loss) during the menopause period, and thereby minimize the bone loss so they have more to counteract with later in their lives.”
“We know that the effect of red clover is very effective for women with osteopenia, but we wait to get permission to make a clinical trial on women with osteoporosis.”
“We know that a lot of the patients with osteoporosis and in treatment with bisphosphonates (e.g. alendronate) may develop osteonecrosis of the jaw. We have seen some examples, but not yet documented in clinical trails, that red clover can have a beneficial effect on jaw necrosis.”
“We can see that different biomarkers suggest that red clover both affect resorption and formation of bone tissue. What is important is that the red clover has to be fermented to have this physiological effect, due to the bioavailability.”
“As the effect on the bone metabolism is different from the bisphosphonates, we belief that the bone strength will continue to improve with longer use, which is opposite for the bisphosphonates increases fracture risk with long term use and it is recommended that treatment only be given up to five years.”
