Eat beef, butter and egg, help cure TB?

Dr. Briffa on an interesting experiment:

… while I was researching this post I came across an interesting human study in which some attempt was made to assess the role of cholesterol in immunity in humans [3].

This study took 21 individuals who had confirmed infection with tuberculosis (TB). All of the individuals were treated with standard TB medication (four antibiotics taken in combination) over a period of 8 weeks.

Of the 21 participants, 10 were given a cholesterol-rich diet (800 mg of cholesterol a day – about the amount of cholesterol found in 5 medium-sized eggs). The rest of the study participants were to eat a diet which contained 250 mg of cholesterol each day.

After two weeks of treatment, 80 per cent of those eating a high-cholesterol diet were free of TB infection, compared to only 9 per cent of the others. This difference was statistically significant. The authors of the study concluded that:

“A cholesterol-rich diet accelerated the sterilization rate of sputum cultures in pulmonary tuberculosis patients, suggesting that cholesterol should be used as a complementary measure in antitubercular treatment.”

The findings support this conclusion, but it should be borne in mind that the benefits from the diet may not have come from additional dietary cholesterol per se. The cholesterol came via enrichment of the diet with foods such as butter, beef liver and egg yolk. It’s possible, therefore, that the benefits came from other nutritional elements found in these foods, say. The authors of this study acknowledge this possibility.