A Review of the Effects of Policosanol on Metabolic Syndrome

Background

Cardiovascular disease is the world's number one killer disease and the leading non-communicable disease in terms of causing premature deaths. Overwhelming evidence suggest that effective management of metabolic syndrome will markedly reduce morbidity and premature deaths from cardiovascular disease. Although many therapies exist, most of them are ineffective due to decreased effectiveness and/or side effects following prolonged usage. Policosanol, a well-tolerated long-chain aliphatic alcohol has been proven to be effective against the components of metabolic syndrome (namely dyslipidemia, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity) even when used for a long period with minimal or no adverse effects.

Objective

This study intends to explore the potential benefits of Policosanol in the management of metabolic syndrome.

Methods

PubMed, Google Scholar, and Science Direct were used as the search engines to retrieve articles related to Policosanol and metabolic syndrome from 2010 to 2021.

Results

The results from the three search engines were scrutinized and merged. Duplicate publications were excluded. Similarly, four articles from the WHO website (www.who.int/publications) were included making a total of 63 articles used in this review. Most of the reviewed articles show Policosanol to be effective in reducing systolic and diastolic blood pressure, blood glucose level, body weight, total cholesterol level, triglyceride level, low density lipoprotein and increasing high density lipoprotein levels. There are few conflicting articles that reported Policosanol to have no effect on lipid parameters.

Conclusion

Policosanol was shown to be a safe and well-tolerated natural product that is effective against all the components of metabolic syndrome. Thus, using this natural product will go a long way in reducing the burden and economic consequences of the syndrome.