The study, published in Biomed Central (BMC) Genomics, tested the impact of consuming an olive-oil rich breakfast in people suffering from metabolic syndrome, which is a cluster of conditions linked to heart disease and diabetes.

“This study shows that intake of virgin olive oil based breakfast, which is rich in phenol compounds is able to repress in vivo expression of several pro-inflammatory genes, thereby switching activity of peripheral blood mononuclear cells to a less deleterious inflammatory profile,” wrote the researchers.

“These results provide at least a partial molecular basis for reduced risk of cardiovascular disease observed in Mediterranean countries, where virgin olive oil represents a main source of dietary fat.”

Previous studies had shown that the consumption of olive oil with a high phenolic content could help reduce pro-inflammatory, pro-oxidant and pro-thrombotic markers compared with the consumption of low phenols virgin olive oil.

The researchers of the current study set out to investigate whether the beneficial effects of olive oil could be linked to gene activity. Their approach was to identify expression changes in genes which could be mediated by olive oil phenol compounds.