University of Aberdeen study into chocolate and heart disease attracts thousands of volunteers
Last updated 4/26/2009 10:40:13 PM
study into chocolate and heart disease attracts thousands of volunteers
It's a scientific experiment involving chocolate so perhaps it was destined for sweet success. But researchers in Scotland are overwhelmed by the response to an appeal for volunteers to help investigate how dark chocolate might help fight heart disease.
Scientists in Aberdeen have attracted 1,500 responses worldwide in a day after appealing for participants to try eating a cocoa-rich dark chocolate specially made for the study, together with standard chocolate, or white chocolate.
It's part of an experiment assessing how flavonoids, found naturally in cocoa, could protect people against heart disease, a main causes of death in the UK.
Forty volunteers aged between 18 and 70 will be selected to take part, with urine and blood samples taken to assess the impact the compounds have on blood function.
One news story on the Internet about the appeal had more than 200,000 hits. And there's even been interest from the United States.
Dr Baukje de Roos, from the University of Aberdeen Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, said: "We have been really overwhelmed by the very positive response. So far we received over 1,500 e-mails and phone calls from people interested."