Component

Carotid plaque area

3 recorded relationships. Experimental role, claim status and evidence remain attached to each record.

Read recorded mechanisms Open recursive mind map

How nutrients influence it

Every nutrient with a recorded effect on this component, credited to the nutrient that acted rather than the chapter that recorded it. Open a nutrient to see the findings and the conditions they were measured under.

How nutrients reach it in more than one step

Chains of two or more recorded steps that end here, grouped by the nutrient they start from. Each step is a separate finding, so a chain is a route a mechanism could take, not proof that it does.

Tracing routes…

What it does

Every recorded relationship this component is part of, grouped by its role. Plain wording comes first; the technical statement follows.

Recorded relationships

What acts on it

  1. In a retrospective cohort of 1,062 participants, 10,800 FU per day for 12 months was followed by reduced carotid intima-media thickness and carotid plaque size, with improvement rates of 66.5 to 95.4%.

    Commercial nattokinase supplement, composition study-specific → Carotid plaque area source_derived_draftungraded
    Experimental context and source evidence
    duration
    12 months
    evidence_access
    Primary PubMed abstract and indexed metadata reviewed. Full-text method details not stated here remain unresolved.
    experimental_model
    Human (1,062 outpatients)
    exposure
    Nattokinase, 10,800 FU per day
    limitations
    Uncontrolled and retrospective, with selection and regression-to-the-mean risk, self-reported lifestyle data and manufacturer-employed authors. Causal inference from it is low certainty. The effect sizes are far larger than the randomized trials at lower doses found, which is the pattern a dose threshold would produce and also the pattern uncontrolled design produces.
    organism
    Human (1,062 outpatients)
    plain_language
    In a retrospective cohort of 1,062 participants, 10,800 FU per day for 12 months was followed by reduced carotid intima-media thickness and carotid plaque size, with improvement rates of 66.5 to 95.4%.
    primary_references
    Effective management of atherosclerosis progress and hyperlipidemia with nattokinase: A clinical study with 1,062 participants. (2022) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36072877/ DOI: 10.3389/fcvm.2022.964977 Correction on record: Erratum in: Front Cardiovasc Med. 2022 Dec 05;9:1076420. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2022.1076420. PMID 36545015.
    route
    In vivo, oral
    tissue
    Carotid artery imaging and blood lipids

    Nattokinase: what the purified enzyme cleaves, what survives being eaten, and the gap between the two (2026-09-23) · lines 1148–1148

    Original AI-assisted curation built from a supplied entity-first document of 105 entities and 129 claims. Every reference in that document was resolved against live PubMed with its abstract read and its DOI cross-checked on 2026-09-23, and the EFSA novel-food opinion was retrieved and read in full. That check corrected two PMIDs that pointed at unrelated papers, two DOIs, and two papers recorded as carrying no erratum that do carry one; it also reversed three findings the supplied document had stated backwards. Two papers carry a published correction, recorded as such and not as a retraction. Three sources are not indexed in PubMed and are cited by what they have. Laboratory lineages are recorded, so the four papers from one group, the three from another and the two readings of a single applicant dossier cannot be counted as separate lines of support. Study-specific doses, units, populations and limitations retained; activity units are never converted between systems. Not publisher full text. · supports · Human (1,062 outpatients) · source_derived_draft · unverified_draft

    In a retrospective cohort of 1,062 participants, 10,800 FU per day for 12 months was followed by reduced carotid intima-media thickness and carotid plaque size, with improvement rates of 66.5 to 95.4%.
    Complete structured claim and evidence

  2. At 6,000 FU per day for 26 weeks, carotid plaque area fell 36.6% against 11.5% in the simvastatin arm, with plaque area falling from 0.25 to 0.16 square centimetres and intima-media thickness from 1.13 to 1.01 mm.

    Commercial nattokinase supplement, composition study-specific → Carotid plaque area source_derived_draftungraded
    Experimental context and source evidence
    duration
    26 weeks
    evidence_access
    Primary PubMed abstract and indexed metadata reviewed. Full-text method details not stated here remain unresolved.
    experimental_model
    Human (82 enrolled, 76 completed: 39 nattokinase, 37 statin)
    exposure
    Nattokinase 6,000 FU per day against simvastatin 20 mg per day
    limitations
    Randomized in allocation but open-label with no placebo, single-centre, and reported in Chinese. An active comparator that also works makes a between-arm difference hard to read, and the imaging endpoints are surrogates.
    organism
    Human (82 enrolled, 76 completed: 39 nattokinase, 37 statin)
    plain_language
    At 6,000 FU per day for 26 weeks, carotid plaque area fell 36.6% against 11.5% in the simvastatin arm, with plaque area falling from 0.25 to 0.16 square centimetres and intima-media thickness from 1.13 to 1.01 mm.
    primary_references
    [A clinical study on the effect of nattokinase on carotid artery atherosclerosis and hyperlipidaemia]. (2017) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28763875/ DOI: 10.3760/cma.j.issn.0376-2491.2017.26.005
    route
    In vivo, oral
    tissue
    Common carotid artery ultrasound

    Nattokinase: what the purified enzyme cleaves, what survives being eaten, and the gap between the two (2026-09-23) · lines 1181–1181

    Original AI-assisted curation built from a supplied entity-first document of 105 entities and 129 claims. Every reference in that document was resolved against live PubMed with its abstract read and its DOI cross-checked on 2026-09-23, and the EFSA novel-food opinion was retrieved and read in full. That check corrected two PMIDs that pointed at unrelated papers, two DOIs, and two papers recorded as carrying no erratum that do carry one; it also reversed three findings the supplied document had stated backwards. Two papers carry a published correction, recorded as such and not as a retraction. Three sources are not indexed in PubMed and are cited by what they have. Laboratory lineages are recorded, so the four papers from one group, the three from another and the two readings of a single applicant dossier cannot be counted as separate lines of support. Study-specific doses, units, populations and limitations retained; activity units are never converted between systems. Not publisher full text. · supports · Human (82 enrolled, 76 completed: 39 nattokinase, 37 statin) · source_derived_draft · unverified_draft

    At 6,000 FU per day for 26 weeks, carotid plaque area fell 36.6% against 11.5% in the simvastatin arm, with plaque area falling from 0.25 to 0.16 square centimetres and intima-media thickness from 1.13 to 1.01 mm.
    Complete structured claim and evidence

  3. The lipid-lowering seen in the nattokinase arm did not correlate with the reduction in intima-media thickness or plaque area.

    Blood low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration → Carotid plaque area source_derived_draftungraded
    Experimental context and source evidence
    duration
    26 weeks
    evidence_access
    Primary PubMed abstract and indexed metadata reviewed. Full-text method details not stated here remain unresolved.
    experimental_model
    Human (39 nattokinase-arm completers)
    exposure
    Nattokinase 6,000 FU per day
    limitations
    A within-arm correlation of r = 0.35 at p = 0.09, which is an absence of detected correlation in a small sample rather than established independence. The authors read it as showing a mechanism separate from lipid lowering.
    organism
    Human (39 nattokinase-arm completers)
    plain_language
    The lipid-lowering seen in the nattokinase arm did not correlate with the reduction in intima-media thickness or plaque area.
    primary_references
    [A clinical study on the effect of nattokinase on carotid artery atherosclerosis and hyperlipidaemia]. (2017) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28763875/ DOI: 10.3760/cma.j.issn.0376-2491.2017.26.005
    route
    In vivo, oral
    tissue
    Carotid imaging against blood lipids

    Nattokinase: what the purified enzyme cleaves, what survives being eaten, and the gap between the two (2026-09-23) · lines 1203–1203

    Original AI-assisted curation built from a supplied entity-first document of 105 entities and 129 claims. Every reference in that document was resolved against live PubMed with its abstract read and its DOI cross-checked on 2026-09-23, and the EFSA novel-food opinion was retrieved and read in full. That check corrected two PMIDs that pointed at unrelated papers, two DOIs, and two papers recorded as carrying no erratum that do carry one; it also reversed three findings the supplied document had stated backwards. Two papers carry a published correction, recorded as such and not as a retraction. Three sources are not indexed in PubMed and are cited by what they have. Laboratory lineages are recorded, so the four papers from one group, the three from another and the two readings of a single applicant dossier cannot be counted as separate lines of support. Study-specific doses, units, populations and limitations retained; activity units are never converted between systems. Not publisher full text. · supports · Human (39 nattokinase-arm completers) · source_derived_draft · unverified_draft

    The lipid-lowering seen in the nattokinase arm did not correlate with the reduction in intima-media thickness or plaque area.
    Complete structured claim and evidence

In the sources

Preserved passages that mention this component, quoted exactly. Open one to read it in context.

    This is a research prototype built from draft material. It is not medical advice, and its statements still await verification against the original studies.

    Evidence, AI assistance and curation standards