Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research Profile

So, one of the things that's very popular right now are these super juices. A lot of people are talking about acai berry, goji berry, but the one we've chosen to study is something called mangosteen. The leading manufacturer is a company called XanGo, and we've worked with them to evaluate their product, which is a mangosteen juice. It includes not only the fruit but also the rind of the fruit. And it's that rind that contains some unique anti-inflammatory agents called xanthones.

Well in many animal studies and in some anecdotal human experiences we've seen pretty remarkable anti-inflammatory effects. So we're actually conducting a large trial of about 220 patients, all of whom have atrial fibrillation and as they go to cardioversion, where they get a shock to the heart to restore normal rhythm, those people are then going to either drink the juice or a placebo juice and the idea being that recurrent atrial fibrillation is often driven by how much inflammation is in the body.

So if mangosteen does what we think it will, reduces the inflammation, we anticipate we'll see less atrial fibrillation recurring in those patients drinking the actual juice. We're also looking at a number of markers for inflammation and antioxidant capabilities, so there's a lot of interest, because if it's positive, this'll really be the first clinical trial to validate the use of this novel juice and there's plenty of other applications that we'll pursue in other research studies.