Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction: High waist circumference and triglyceride (TG) disturbances are two important and diagnostic components constituting the metabolic syndrome. This study was designed to investigate whether herbal medicine, Anethum graveolens (dill) extract, is capable to improve abdominal obesity presented by high waist circumference and triglyceride in patients with metabolic syndrome.

Design: A total of 24 mens and womens who met the criteria of metabolic syndrome (updated of ATP3) were included. A permuted block randomization was used to achieve a balance between treatment groups. Each group received either Anethum graveolens extract (dill group; n=12) or placebo (control group; n=12), one pill (600 mg) every day for 3 months.

Results: At the end of 12 weeks, mean waist circumference did not change significantly from baseline in both groups and these measures also did not differ between the two treatment groups. In contrast, a remarkable statistically and clinically improvement in the mean TG level was observed from 257.0 (124.5) at baseline to 201.5 (115.5) at the end of study in dill group. However serum TG was not significantly different in dill group compared with placebo. No adverse reaction was detected during the course of this study.

Conclusions: The beneficial effect of 12 weeks dill treatment include the improvement of triglyceride level from baseline was not accompanied by changes in abdominal obesity presented by waist circumference. It seems that larger human trials should be performed to investigate the clinical efficacy and safety of dill treatment as an herbal medicine to resolve metabolic syndrome related criteria.

Keywords:: Abdominal obesity, waist circumference, metabolic syndrome, Anethum graveolens (dii)