Coconut oil may combat infection with Candida albicans, according to preclinical research published in mSphere.
Mice on a diet that included coconut oil had significantly lower gastrointestinal colonization by C albicans than mice that were fed high-fat diets without coconut oil or mice that received a standard diet.
“We found that diet can be an effective way to reduce the amount of Candida in the mouse,” said study author Carol Kumamoto, PhD, of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts.
“The extension of this finding to the human population is something that needs to be addressed in the future.”
Previous research showed that changes to diet, including changes in the amount and type of fat, can alter gastrointestinal microbiota. And in vitro studies showed that coconut oil has antifungal properties.
So Dr Kumamoto and her colleagues studied the effect of different diets on C albicans colonization in mice.
The mice received standard diets or high-fat diets containing coconut oil, beef tallow, or soybean oil. The mice were fed these diets for 14 days prior to inoculation with C albicans and 21 days after.
At 21 days post-inoculation, gastrointestinal colonization with C albicans was significantly lower in the stomach contents of mice fed the coconut oil than mice fed the beef tallow (P<0.0001), the soybean oil (P<0.0001), or the standard diet (P<0.0001).
“When you compared a mouse on a high-fat diet that contained either beef fat or soybean oil to mice eating coconut oil, there was about a 10-fold drop in colonization,” Dr Kumamoto said.
In another experiment, the researchers switched mice receiving beef tallow to coconut oil.
“Four days after the change in diet, the colonization changed so it looked almost exactly like what you saw in a mouse who had been on coconut oil the entire time,” Dr Kumamoto said.
“There are 2 directions that we would like to take with this research now,” she added. “One of them is finding out the mechanism of how this works. That is a big question we would like to answer. The second question is whether this can have any impact on humans.”
The researchers are in discussion with Joseph Bliss, MD, PhD, of Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, about launching a clinical trial testing coconut oil in hospitalized infants at high risk of developing systemic candidiasis.
