Effects of Palm Oil Consumption on Lipid Profile among Rural Ivorian Youth

As palm oil has been qualified as atherogen, we have studied the impact of its consumption on changes of lipid and lipoprotein profiles of young Ivorian healthy subjects living in rural areas. It is a descriptive cross-sectional analytical study of about 120 Ivorian subjects aged 18 to 30 years, including 65 regular consumers of palm oil and 55 subjects consuming that oil periodically as control subjects. Serum concentrations of triglycerides, total cholesterol, HDL, LDL cholesterols and lipoprotein (a) were measured by enzyme conventional methods. The TC serum varied not significantly in both subjects’ groups as the triglycerides and HDL-C did. In addition, 58.46% of palm oil consumers had hypoLDLemia. The serum concentration of lipoprotein (a) was not significantly elevated (p> 0.05) with consumers compared to controls: 33.85% versus 29.09%, p = 0.55. The percentage of subjects with normal serum concentrations is higher in all the studied parameters, with both that is the consumers and the controls, except LDL cholesterol, of which the percentage of subjects with a lower value is the highest (58.46% for consumers and 52.73% for controls). This study has shown that the consumption of palm oil did not alter the lipid and lipoprotein profile of the consumer, on the contrary, this consumption revealed a decrease in cholesterol levels with these subjects.