Lauren Blekkenhorst

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at Edith Cowan University

The reduction of saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake has been the basis of long-standing dietary recommendations. However, recent epidemiologic studies have reported conflicting evidence in the relation between SFA consumption and risk of atherosclerotic vascular disease (ASVD) mortality. We investigated the association of SFA intake with serum lipid...

Dietary nitrate is a precursor to nitric oxide, for which plausible mechanisms exist for both beneficial and detrimental influences in multiple sclerosis (MS) (1,2) . Whether dietary nitrate has any role in MS onset is unclear. We aimed to test associations between nitrate intake from food sources (plant, vegetable, animal, processed meat, and unpr...

Observational studies suggest higher intake of cruciferous vegetables (e.g., broccoli, cauliflower, kale) is associated with lower chronic disease risk (1,2) . Glucosinolates (GSL) and cysteine sulfoxides such as S- methyl cysteine sulfoxide (SMCSO) are sulfur-containing compounds found in high amounts in these vegetables ⁽³⁾ . Currently, no data e...

Aims Higher cruciferous vegetable (e.g., broccoli) intake is associated with lower risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but limited causal evidence exists. We investigated if cruciferous vegetable intake improved glycaemic control compared to root/squash vegetables in non‐diabetic adults with elevated blood pressure. Materials and M...

Purpose Vitamin K may inhibit vascular calcification, a common attribute of atherosclerotic vascular diseases (ASVDs). We examined associations between dietary vitamin K1 intakes and both subclinical atherosclerosis and ASVD events, including hospitalisations and mortality, in older women. Methods 1,436 community-dwelling women (mean ± SD age 75.1...

Background: Dietary nitrate, as a nitric oxide (NO) precursor, may support brain health and protect against dementia. Objective: Our primary aim was to investigate whether dietary nitrate is associated with neuroimaging markers of brain health linked with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Participants: Study participants were cognitively unimpaired in...

Background: While potatoes are considered a dietary staple in some cultures, evidence suggests that their impact on T2D risk is nuanced, with preparation methods and dietary patterns playing crucial roles. Investigating the substitution effects of replacing potatoes with other foods is required to inform dietary recommendations for lowering T2D ris...

Provision of non-invasive vascular imaging results to individuals has been shown to improve cardiovascular disease risk factor control: its impact on diet remains uncertain. In this two-arm, single-blind, parallel, 12-week randomized controlled trial, 240 participants, 57.5% females aged 60–80 y had abdominal aortic calcification and clinical asses...

BACKGROUND Flavonoids may play a role in mitigating atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases, with evidence suggesting effects may differ between vascular beds. Studies examining associations with subclinical markers of atherosclerosis between subpopulations with different underlying risks of atherosclerosis are lacking. METHODS Among 5599 particip...

Background Higher cruciferous vegetable intake is associated with lower cardiovascular disease risk in observational studies. The pathways involved remain uncertain. We aimed to determine whether cruciferous vegetable intake (active) lowers 24-h brachial systolic blood pressure (SBP; primary outcome) compared to root and squash vegetables (control)...

Background Cardiovascular imaging interventions are widely used to convey messages regarding cardiovascular disease risk, individual capability to adopt lifestyle changes, and the potential benefits of adhering to therapy or behaviour change. Such interventions have the potential to change misconceptions and promote positive beliefs and attitudes t...

Introduction Dietary nitrate is potentially beneficial for cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and nervous systems due to its role as a nitric oxide (NO) precursor. Increased nitrate intake improves cardiovascular health and therefore could protect against dementia, given the cardiovascular-dementia link. Objective To investigate the association betw...

Frailty is a distinctive health state related to the ageing process in which multiple body systems gradually lose their in-built reserves, and is associated with declines across sensory, neurological, cardiovascular, and musculoskeletal systems ⁽¹⁾ . Previously, relationships have been identified between high dietary nitrate intake and several comp...

Introduction: Cardiovascular imaging results offer valuable information that can guide health decisions, but their impact on medication use and adherence is unclear. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to determine the downstream impact of cardiovascular imaging results on medication use and adherence. Methods: Searches were conducted...

Introduction Nitrate and nitrite are naturally occurring in both plant- and animal-sourced foods, are used as additives in the processing of meat, and are found in water. There is growing evidence that they exhibit a spectrum of health effects, depending on the dietary source. The aim of the study was to examine source-dependent associations betwee...

Context The associations of vegetable and potato intakes with type 2 diabetes (T2D) appear to be nuanced, depending on vegetable types and preparation method, respectively. Objective We investigated the associations of total vegetable, vegetable subgroup, and potato intakes with (1) markers of T2D at baseline and (2) incident T2D cumulative over a...

Scope Higher intake of cruciferous and allium vegetables is associated with lower cardiometabolic risk. Little research has investigated the cardiometabolic effects of S‐methyl cysteine sulfoxide (SMCSO), found abundant in these vegetables. This study hypothesizes that SMCSO will blunt development of metabolic syndrome features in mice fed high‐fat...

Background: Leaflet calcification contributes to the development and progression of aortic valve stenosis. Vitamin K activates inhibitors of vascular calcification and may modulate inflammation and skeletal bone loss. Therefore, we aimed to determine whether higher dietary intakes of vitamin K1 are associated with a lower incidence of aortic steno...

Background Nitric oxide is a free radical that can be produced from dietary nitrate and positively affect cardiovascular health. With cardiovascular health playing an important role in the etiology of dementia, we hypothesized a link between dietary nitrate intake and the risk of dementia. We therefore aimed to evaluate the association of total, ve...

Sulfur containing compounds including glucosinolates (GLS), sulforaphane (SFN) and S-methyl-l-cysteine sulfoxide (SMCSO) have been proposed to be partly responsible for the beneficial health effects of cruciferous vegetables. As such, greater understanding of their measurements within foods is important to estimate intake in humans and to inform di...

Higher intakes of cruciferous and allium vegetables are associated with a lower risk of cardiometabolic-related outcomes in observational studies. Whilst acknowledging the many healthy compounds within these vegetables, animal studies indicate that some of these beneficial effects may be partially mediated by S-methyl cysteine sulfoxide (SMCSO), a...

Background: Nitric oxide is a free radical that can be produced from dietary nitrate and positively affects cardiovascular health. With cardiovascular health playing an important role in the etiology of dementia, we hypothesized a link between dietary nitrate intake and the risk of dementia. Objectives: This study aimed to find the association o...

Health-related behaviours contribute to the global burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Cardiovascular imaging can be used to screen asymptomatic individuals for increased risk of CVD to enable earlier interventions to promote health-related behaviours to prevent or reduce CVD risk. Some theories of behaviour and behaviour change assume that eng...

Background & aims: Dietary nitrate improves cardiovascular health via a nitric oxide (NO) pathway. NO is key to both cardiovascular and brain health. There is also a strong association between vascular risk factors and brain health. Dietary nitrate intake could therefore be associated with better cognitive function and reduced risk of cognitive de...

Context: Observational studies have reported lower risks of type 2 diabetes with higher vitamin K1 intakes, but these studies overlook effect modification due to known diabetes risk factors. Objective: To identify subgroups that might benefit from vitamin K1 intakes, we examined associations between vitamin K1 intake and incident diabetes overal...

Observational studies have observed lower risks of type 2 diabetes (T2D) with higher vitamin K1 intakes,(Reference Ibarrola-Jurado, Salas-Salvadó and Martínez-González1,Reference Beulens, van der and Grobbee2) but these studies have lacked power to investigate effect modification due to known risk factors for diabetes. Thus, we aimed to examine ass...

Background Dietary nitrate has a controversial role in human health. For over half a century, the nitrate content of the three major dietary sources – vegetables, meat, and water – has been legislated, regulated, and monitored due to public health concerns over cancer risk. In contrast, a growing and compelling body of evidence indicates that dieta...

Dietary nitrate, found predominantly in green leafy vegetables and other vegetables such as radish, celery, and beetroot, has been shown to beneficially modulate inflammatory processes and immune cell function in animals and healthy individuals. The impact of increased nitrate intake on soluble inflammatory mediators in individuals with hypertensio...

This study examined the association between dietary Vitamin K1 intake with fracture-related hospitalizations over 14.5 years in community-dwelling older Australian women (n = 1373, ≥70 years). Dietary Vitamin K1 intake at baseline (1998) was estimated using a validated food frequency questionnaire and a new Australian Vitamin K nutrient database, w...

Objectives Higher vegetable intakes are hypothesized to reduce the risk of developing diabetes but the findings are weak. Using Diet, Cancer and Health cohort, we aimed to 1) analyze the relationship between intakes of total vegetable, vegetable subgroups and incident diabetes, 2) analyze separately the association between intakes of total potatoes...

Objectives Our objective was to examine whether dietary intakes of vitamin K1 and vitamin K2 were associated with all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related and cancer-related mortality and to identify subpopulations that may benefit the most from higher vitamin K intakes. Methods Participants from the Danish Diet, Cancer, and Health Study co...

Purpose Chronic inflammation plays a role in the pathogenesis of age-related renal disease and the diet can moderate systemic inflammation. The primary objective of this study was to examine the associations between a dietary inflammatory index (DII®) score and renal function, the trajectory of renal function decline, and renal disease-related hosp...

Purpose Existing research suggests that changes to retinal vascular caliber reflect nitric oxide (NO)-dependent endothelial dysfunction. Dietary nitrate is an important source of NO; however, studies on the link between dietary nitrate intake and retinal microvasculature are lacking. We aimed to assess the cross-sectional association between intake...

Regional food systems are complex networks, with numerous retail sources that underpin a local economy. However, evidence is limited regarding how consumers define, identify, and source regionally grown fresh fruits and vegetables (RGFFV). A cross-sectional study was conducted in Tasmania (TAS) and South Western Australia (SWA) to compare how RGFFV...

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Recent work suggests a link between vitamin K insufficiency and deficiency with vascular calcification, a marker of advanced atherosclerosis. Vitamin K refers to a group of fat-soluble vitamins important for blood coagulation, reducing inflammation, regulating blood calc...

Purpose Increasing vegetable intake and diversity are recommended to maintain better health. Evidence for the health benefits of vegetable diversity, separate from total intake, is scarce. We aimed to investigate the associations of vegetable diversity with subclinical measures of atherosclerosis and atherosclerotic vascular disease (ASVD) mortalit...

Fresh fruits and vegetables are a cornerstone of a balanced diet; their consumption has health, environmental, ethical, and economic implications. This pilot study aimed to: (i) measure fruit and vegetable consumption; (ii) understand consumer perceptions of the perceived importance of regionally grown fresh fruit and vegetables (RGFFV); and (iii)...

Purpose Short-term trials indicate inorganic nitrate and nitrate-rich vegetables may have vascular health benefits. However, few observational studies have explored the relationship between nitrate intake and long-term cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the association of nitrate intake from vege...

Purpose: Osteocalcin (OC), an osteoblast-specific secreted protein expressed by mature osteoblasts, is used in clinical practice and in research as a marker of bone turnover. The carboxylated (cOC) and undercarboxylated (ucOC) forms may have a different biological function but age-specific reference ranges for these components are not established....

One year of calcium supplementation in older women led to modest reductions in total osteocalcin and undercarboxylated osteocalcin (ucOC), with no changes in muscle or fat mass, or glycated haemoglobin. Future studies should explore whether treatments with more profound effects of suppressing ucOC may lead to impaired glycaemic control. Introducti...

Inorganic dietary nitrate, found abundantly in green leafy and some root vegetables, elicits several beneficial physiological effects, including a reduction in blood pressure and improvements in blood flow through nitrate–nitrite–nitric oxide signaling. Recent animal and human studies have shown that dietary nitrate and nitrite also modulate inflam...

Background In younger individuals, dietary nitrate supplementation has been shown to improve short‐term vascular and muscle function. The role of higher habitual nitrate intake as part of a typical diet on muscle function in ageing has not been investigated. A cross‐sectional study of relationships between dietary nitrate and measures of muscle fun...

Nitric oxide (NO) facilitates anti-atherosclerotic effects. Vegetables are a major source of dietary nitrate. Experimental data indicates that dietary nitrate can significantly reduce major risk factors for atherosclerosis and subsequent cardiovascular disease (CVD), as nitrate can be metabolized to produce NO via the nitrate-nitrite-NO pathway. Th...

Background: Higher intakes of flavonoids provide health benefits, however, the importance of each flavonoid class and which population groups may receive the greatest protection from higher flavonoid intake warrants further investigation. Objective: To explore the associations of flavonoid and flavonoid-rich wholefood intakes with all-cause mort...

The role of vegetable and fruit intake in reducing falls risk in elderly populations is uncertain. This study examined the associations of vegetable and fruit intake with falls-related hospitalisations in a prospective cohort study of elderly women ( n 1429, ≥70 years), including effects on muscular function, which represented a potential causal pa...

The importance of vegetable diversity for the risk of falling and fractures is unclear. Our objective was to examine the relationship between vegetable diversity with injurious falling and fractures leading to hospitalization in a prospective cohort of older Australian women (n = 1429, ≥70 years). Vegetable diversity was quantified by assessing the...

Dietary nitrate is increasingly linked to a variety of beneficial health outcomes. Our purpose was to estimate dietary nitrate consumption and identify key dietary changes which have occurred over time within a representative sample of Australian women. Women from the 1946–1951 cohort of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health with comp...

Background: Emerging evidence suggests that increasing intakes of nitrate-rich vegetables may be an effective approach to reduce blood pressure. Objective: Our primary aim was to determine whether daily consumption of nitrate-rich vegetables over 4 wk would result in lower blood pressure. Design: Thirty participants with prehypertension or unt...

Adequate vegetable consumption is one of the cornerstones of a healthy diet. The recommendation to increase vegetable intake is part of most dietary guidelines. Despite widespread and long-running public health messages to increase vegetable intake, similar to other countries worldwide, less than 1 in 10 adult Australians manage to meet target advi...

Background: Dietary patterns rich in fruits and vegetables are considered to reduce atherosclerotic disease presentation and are reported to be inversely associated with subclinical measures of atherosclerosis, such as carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) and plaque. However, the effect of vegetable intake alone, and relationships to specif...

Background Dietary nitrate is an important source of nitric oxide (NO), a molecule critical for cardiovascular health. Nitrate is sequentially reduced to NO through an enterosalivary nitrate-nitrite-NO pathway that involves the oral microbiome. This pathway is considered an important adjunct pathway to the classical l-arginine–NO synthase pathway....

Scope: The cardioprotective effects of apples are primarily attributed to flavonoids, found predominantly in the skin. This study aimed to determine if acute and/or chronic (4 weeks) ingestion of flavonoid-rich apples improves endothelial function, blood pressure (BP) and arterial stiffness in individuals at risk for CVD. Methods and results: In...

Background Higher vegetable intake is consistently associated with lower atherosclerotic vascular disease (ASVD) events. However, the components responsible and mechanisms involved are uncertain. Nonnutritive phytochemicals may be involved. The objective of this study was to investigate the associations of total vegetable intake and types of vegeta...

Vegetable derived nitrate is now recognised as an important bioactive phytochemical with cardioprotective properties. Nitrate, through the recently described enterosalivary nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide (NO) pathway, increases NO, a molecule pivotal for cardiovascular health. Clinical trials have observed that dietary nitrate has similar effects to...

Arterial wall thickening, stimulated by low-grade systemic inflammation, underlies many cardiovascular events. As diet is a significant moderator of systemic inflammation, the dietary inflammatory index (DII TM ) has recently been devised to assess the overall inflammatory potential of an individual’s diet. The primary objective of this study was t...

Background and purpose: A short-term increase in dietary nitrate (NO3(-)) improves markers of vascular health via formation of nitric oxide and other bioactive nitrogen oxides. Whether this translates into long-term vascular disease risk reduction has yet to be examined. We investigated the association of vegetable-derived nitrate intake with comm...

Background: Nitrate-rich vegetables lower blood pressure and improve endothelial function in humans. It is not known, however, whether increased consumption of nitrate-rich vegetables translates to a lower risk of atherosclerotic vascular disease (ASVD) mortality. Objective: The objective was to investigate the association of nitrate intake from ve...

The importance of vegetable and fruit intakes for the prevention of fracture in older women is not well understood. Few studies have explored vegetable and fruit intakes separately, or the associations of specific types of vegetables and fruits with fracture hospitalisations. The objective of this study was to examine the associations of vegetable...

Scope: Nitrate from vegetables improves vascular health with short term intake. Whether this translates into improved long term health outcomes has yet to be investigated. To enable reliable analysis of nitrate intake from food records there is a strong need for a comprehensive nitrate content of vegetables database. Methods and results: A syste...

Objective: We aimed to study whether dietary fat composition (n-3 and n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids ratio (PUFAs) and PUFAs and saturated fatty acids (SFAs) ratio) is associated with total body fat (TF) and body fat distribution and whether this association was modified by the presence of chronic disease in middle-aged and elderly women in two p...