Mahdi Mirahmadi¹, Malihe Aghasizadeh², Habibollah Esmaily^{3, 4}, Hamed Baharara⁵, Maryam Mohammadi-bajgiran², Reza Assaran-Darban⁶, Gordon A. Ferns⁷, Farzin Hadizaheh^{1, 8,}, Majid Ghayour Mobarhan^2,

The lycopene has positively affect human health by reducing metabolic disorder, which is a mechanism behind metabolic syndrome (MetS). We developed a method for encapsulating lycopene and designed a randomized clinical trial to assess the effect of lycopene on lipid profile of patients with MetS. In this study, 80 subjects with MetS were randomly assigned to two groups: one group received lycopene at a dose of 30 mg (1 tablet per-day) for 8 weeks. The second group received placebo with similar color, size, and other appearance to lycopene tablets. Participants returned for follow-up visits after 4 and 8 weeks and blood samples were collected for examination of fasting blood glucose and lipid profile. These measurements were taken using an alpha-classic analyzer. The average age of the lycopene and placebo groups were 44.25±11.25 and 41.75 ±10.05 years, respectively. There were significant differences in systolic blood pressure (SBP), fasting blood glucose (FBG), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), total cholesterol (TC), and triglycerides (TG) in the lycopene group before and after treatment, but there was no significant effect of treatment in the placebo group. After adjusting for confounding factors such as age, sex, FBG, LDL, and TC as co-variant, the P value of difference between lycopene and placebo groups was significant. Traditionally, lycopene was found to significantly increase serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in patients with MetS. This research expands our knowledge about protective effects of lycopene on lipid profile, as an important risk factor for evaluating of cardiovascular disease.

metabolic syndrome, lycopene, lipid profile, blood pressure