C15:0 & Blood Pressure Part II

Healthy Aging

The need to protect healthy blood pressure at the earliest stages

Over the past month, we covered two new studies on C15:0 and cardiovascular health in adults. Specifically, Arghavani et al.’s clinical trial showed that increased C15:0 levels significantly correlated with decreased arterial stiffness. Meanwhile, Chen et al. demonstrated that people with circulating C15:0 levels greater than 0.15% of total fatty acids have healthier blood pressure. This week, we talk about a recent study evaluating associations between cell membrane fatty acids and blood pressure in children. Let’s dive in.

Healthy adult hearts start with healthy childhood blood pressure.

As covered by Urbina et al., the higher our blood pressure as children, the greater our risk of developing cardiovascular disease as adults. This is of increasing importance because over the past 40 years, blood pressure has been increasing among kids. And this rise in blood pressure has been independent of the rise in obesity. Thus, protecting healthy blood pressure in children will have a direct, positive effect on protecting our heart health as adults.

Got it. So, where does C15:0 come into the picture?

In their study, Huang et al. measured levels of the following fatty acid groups in the red blood cell membranes of 421 children:

• Odd-chain saturated fatty acids (aka OSFAs, C15:0 and C17:0)
• Monounsaturated fatty acids (aka MUFAs)
• Polyunsaturated fatty acids (aka PUFAs, further divided into omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs)

They then assessed whether these fatty acid groups were associated with higher or lower blood pressure in children.

I’m in. What did they find?

Huang et al. had the following key findings related to OSFAs:

• The average red blood cell membrane concentration of C15:0 in children was about 0.125% of all fatty acids. As a reminder, our Metabolites paper summarizes the robust evidence of needing at least 0.2% C15:0 in cell membranes to avoid C15:0 deficiency and resulting negative impacts to our long-term health, including our heart health.
• Children with the lowest OSFAs had the highest systolic and diastolic blood pressure. See the figure below, where “Q1” represents children with the lowest quartile of C15:0 levels. This finding is consistent with Chen et al., which showed that adults with C15:0 levels less than 0.15% also had higher blood pressure.

• Neither ESFAs nor dairy fat intake had a direct influence on blood pressure. This finding was consistent with Arghavani et al., which showed that a primary driver of improved vascular health was specifically increased C15:0 levels vs. the whole dairy food matrix. In fact, increased even-chain saturated fatty acids (ESFAs) were associated with increased blood pressure in adults.

In summary, Huang et al.’s study further supports that low C15:0 levels are associated with higher blood pressure – alarmingly, even among children. The good news is that, as demonstrated by multiple clinical trials, our C15:0 levels can be raised by increasing our intake of C15:0. Further, Arghavani et al. showed in their clinical trial that increasing C15:0 levels can improve vascular function within 12 weeks.