New research shows snacking on pistachios can improve glucose and cardio-metabolic parameters in pre-diabetics.
A research team led by Pablo Hernández-Alonso from the Universitari Hospital of Sant Joan de Reus in Spain, recruited 54 pre-diabetics. They were given one of two diets: a pistachio-supplemented diet (PD; including 57 g/day of pistachios) or a control diet (CD), each for four months in a crossover manner. There was a gap of two weeks between the diet changes.
Results showed that PD diet significantly reduced fasting glucose, insulin, and homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance compared to the diet given to the control group. Moreover, those who consumed pistachios also had reduced cardiometabolic risk markers, including fibrinogen, oxidized low-density lipoprotein, and platelet factor 4 (P < 0.05), while there was an increase in glucagon-like peptide-1.
Researchers explained that there were 9 and 6 percent decreases in interleukin-6 mRNA and resistin gene expression, correspondingly, after the PD (P < 0.05). Around 69 percent of increase was seen in SLC2A4 expression in CD (P = 0.03 for PD versus CD). During the pistachio diet there was a 78.78 percent decrease in cellular glucose uptake by lymphocytes.
"Chronic pistachio consumption is emerging as a useful nutritional strategy for the prediabetic state," the authors wrote in the study.
The findings were published in Diabetes Care.
