`Study Shows Potential Health Benefits of Hydroxytyrosol in Olive Oil - Olive Oil Times
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Health

Study Shows Potential Health Benefits of Hydroxytyrosol in Olive Oil

By Paolo DeAndreis
Apr. 14, 2025 13:12 UTC
Summary Summary

New research has shown that hydrox­y­ty­rosol, a phe­no­lic com­pound found in extra vir­gin olive oil, can sig­nif­i­cantly reduce oxi­da­tion lev­els of LDL cho­les­terol, poten­tially improv­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar health. The study also found that hydrox­y­ty­rosol intake affects extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles and miRNAs, which could have sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions for inter­cel­lu­lar sig­nal­ing path­ways related to health and dis­ease, par­tic­u­larly in neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tions. Researchers cau­tion that more stud­ies are needed to fully under­stand the long-term impli­ca­tions and exact mech­a­nisms of hydrox­y­ty­rosol’s impact on human health.

New research sheds new light on the poten­tial impact on human health of hydrox­y­ty­rosol, one of the main phe­no­lic com­pounds found in extra vir­gin olive oil.

The study con­firmed, among other find­ings, that hydrox­y­ty­rosol sig­nif­i­cantly reduces the oxi­da­tion lev­els of LDL cho­les­terol (the so-called ​‘bad cho­les­terol’), thus poten­tially improv­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar health and reduc­ing asso­ci­ated risks.

“Some extra vir­gin olive oil phe­nols con­tain pre­cur­sors of this mol­e­cule. Once we con­sume extra vir­gin olive oil, our body reacts by pro­duc­ing hydrox­y­ty­rosol,” study co-author María-Carmen López de las Hazas told Olive Oil Times.

The potency of hydrox­y­ty­rosol as an antiox­i­dant cre­ates an antiox­i­dant-rich envi­ron­ment in the plasma, pro­tect­ing LDL from oxida­tive stress.- Alberto Dávalos, researcher, IMDEA

López is a researcher at the Laboratory of Epigenetics of Lipid Metabolism at the Research Institute on Food and Health Sciences (IMDEA) in Madrid.

The study involved a clin­i­cal trial dur­ing which 12 healthy par­tic­i­pants received first a sin­gle 25-mil­ligram dose of hydrox­y­ty­rosol, fol­lowed by a daily dose of 25 mil­ligrams of hydrox­y­ty­rosol for one week.

The researchers doc­u­mented a mea­sur­able decrease in oxi­dized LDL (oxLDL) lev­els fol­low­ing one week of daily hydrox­y­ty­rosol intake.

See Also:Health News

Reducing oxLDL is cru­cial as it plays a key role in devel­op­ing ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases.

“We observed notable reduc­tions in LDL oxi­da­tion after just one week, which sur­prised us because we ini­tially believed it would take much longer to see any effect,” Alberto Dávalos, an IMDEA researcher and head of the project, explained.

“The potency of hydrox­y­ty­rosol as an antiox­i­dant cre­ates an antiox­i­dant-rich envi­ron­ment in the plasma, pro­tect­ing LDL from oxida­tive stress,” he added.

The researchers focused on extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles to bet­ter under­stand the mech­a­nisms behind hydroxytyrosol’s antiox­i­dant activ­ity. These vesi­cles are small mol­e­cules secreted by cells and cir­cu­late through­out the body, car­ry­ing sub­stances and mes­sages to other cells and tis­sues.

“We call them the cel­lu­lar WhatsApp. They are small lipid-bound vesi­cles secreted by cells across all king­doms of life, serv­ing as crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion vehi­cles between cells,” López and Dávalos explained.

Extracellular vesi­cles trans­port var­i­ous bio­log­i­cal mol­e­cules, includ­ing pro­teins, lipids and nucleic acids like microRNAs (miRNAs), influ­enc­ing phys­i­o­log­i­cal processes and inter­cel­lu­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

The research showed that hydrox­y­ty­rosol intake increases extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cle secre­tion and mod­u­lates their size and cargo poten­tial, sig­nif­i­cantly impact­ing inter­cel­lu­lar sig­nal­ing path­ways related to health and dis­ease.

Additionally, researchers found that hydrox­y­ty­rosol intake affects miRNAs trans­ported within extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles. Micro ribonu­cleic acid mol­e­cules (miRNAs) are essen­tial for reg­u­lat­ing gene expres­sion by deter­min­ing the amount of pro­tein pro­duced from a gene.

miRNAs are involved in var­i­ous phys­i­o­log­i­cal processes, includ­ing inflam­ma­tion and car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, and may pro­tect against cer­tain can­cers and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tions.

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According to the researchers, hydrox­y­ty­rosol intake induced notable changes in the activ­ity of spe­cific miRNAs, with some becom­ing more active and oth­ers less active.

“miRNA-124, typ­i­cally ele­vated in car­dio­vas­cu­lar com­pli­ca­tions, was sig­nif­i­cantly decreased, which is ben­e­fi­cial,” López and Dávalos noted.

“Conversely, miRNA-590, impor­tant for heart repair after myocar­dial infarc­tion, increased, indi­cat­ing poten­tial car­dio­pro­tec­tive effects,” they explained.

“These miRNAs might serve as bio­mark­ers or ther­a­peu­tic tar­gets, high­light­ing the promis­ing impact of hydrox­y­ty­rosol,” the researchers empha­sized.

“However, the long-term impli­ca­tions and exact mech­a­nisms still need clar­i­fi­ca­tion through extended stud­ies,” they cau­tioned.

Hydroxytyrosol’s poten­tial impact on human health is also related to some unique prop­er­ties researchers are explor­ing, espe­cially its abil­ity to cross the blood-brain bar­rier.

“Something rel­e­vant about hydrox­y­ty­rosol is that this is one of the few phe­no­lic com­pounds that can be found in the brain, at least in sev­eral ani­mal mod­els,” Dávalos noted.

See Also:Hydroxytyrosol May Help Prevent Colon Cancer Spread, New Research Suggests

“Normal polyphe­nols can­not trans­port through the blood-brain bar­rier unless they have a trans­porter or a spe­cific chem­i­cal struc­ture. One pos­si­bil­ity for how they cross the bar­rier is trans­port within extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles,” he explained.

The blood-brain bar­rier is com­posed of highly spe­cial­ized cells lin­ing brain ves­sels. It serves as a pro­tec­tive shield that pre­vents bac­te­ria, viruses and other poten­tially harm­ful mol­e­cules from access­ing the brain. The bar­rier also reg­u­lates the entry of nutri­ents and other cru­cial sub­stances.

According to the researchers, this dis­cov­ery could have sig­nif­i­cant impli­ca­tions if future stud­ies con­firm that hydrox­y­ty­rosol is trans­ported via extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles in a larger pop­u­la­tion.

“This is rel­e­vant from a dietary point of view because when you con­sume polyphe­nol-rich extra vir­gin olive oil, a cer­tain amount of hydrox­y­ty­rosol can be incor­po­rated within extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles, increas­ing its poten­tial to cross the blood-brain bar­rier,” Dávalos explained.

“This mech­a­nism opens excit­ing ther­a­peu­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­larly regard­ing neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases,” the researchers pointed out.

Still, the sci­en­tists empha­sized that addi­tional stud­ies are nec­es­sary to thor­oughly under­stand this cel­lu­lar behav­ior and its impli­ca­tions.

“It is poten­tially a pos­i­tive result to see hydrox­y­ty­rosol cross­ing the bar­rier, but increased per­me­abil­ity to ben­e­fi­cial sub­stances trans­ported in extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles could also imply increased vul­ner­a­bil­ity to other com­pounds,” Dávalos warned.

“Additionally, if the blood-brain bar­rier is per­me­able enough to allow hydrox­y­ty­rosol through, other bar­ri­ers like the pla­cen­tal bar­rier might also be crossed when trans­ported in extra­cel­lu­lar vesi­cles. This is an entirely new area to explore,” the researchers said.

According to the sci­en­tists, future research might inves­ti­gate the rela­tion­ship between hydrox­y­ty­rosol intake and endoge­nous antiox­i­dant mech­a­nisms, which are cru­cial processes nat­u­rally acti­vated by the human body to com­bat oxida­tive stress.

“As humans, we obtain antiox­i­dants through two mech­a­nisms. One is endoge­nous, where our body pro­duces antiox­i­dants nat­u­rally. The other is exoge­nous, where we con­sume antiox­i­dants through our diet,” López explained.

She noted that intro­duc­ing potent antiox­i­dants, includ­ing hydrox­y­ty­rosol, might decrease endoge­nous antiox­i­dant pro­duc­tion.

According to the researcher, this mech­a­nism might not always be ben­e­fi­cial, espe­cially under con­di­tions of high oxida­tive stress.

“What could poten­tially hap­pen is that con­sum­ing hydrox­y­ty­rosol ini­tially helps fight oxida­tive con­di­tions, but when hydrox­y­ty­rosol’s effect is exhausted, our endoge­nous antiox­i­dant sys­tems might remain inac­tive for a while, leav­ing us vul­ner­a­ble,” López and Dávalos explained.

The researchers men­tioned past expe­ri­ences with antiox­i­dants used in can­cer pre­ven­tion tri­als in the United States dur­ing the 1980s and 1990s.

“The intake of those syn­thetic antiox­i­dants in large clin­i­cal tri­als led to neg­a­tive out­comes, with increased mor­tal­ity, espe­cially among smok­ers,” they recalled.

However, the sci­en­tists high­lighted a cru­cial dif­fer­ence: hydrox­y­ty­rosol is a nat­u­rally occur­ring mol­e­cule intro­duced under nor­mal dietary con­di­tions.

“This sig­nif­i­cantly changes the sce­nario. A bal­anced sup­ple­men­ta­tion of antiox­i­dants through dietary habits might be the opti­mal strat­egy to har­ness the best pos­si­ble effects of hydrox­y­ty­rosol,” López and Dávalos con­cluded.

“Further stud­ies are needed to fully under­stand these aspects,” they empha­sized.

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