Table 1.

Health benefits of secoisolariciresinol diglucoside (SDG) and its metabolites, namely secoisolariciresinol (SECO), enterolactone (ENL), and enterodiol (END).

Health benefits		Reference
Effects on cardiovascular system	• decrease in thrombus formation rate	Sano et al., 2003; Prasad, 2007, 2008, 2009
	• decrease in atherosclerosis
	• reduction of serum and hepatic cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol levels	Prasad, 2005; Prasad et al., 1998; Fukumitsu et al., 2008; Felmlee et al., 2009
	• increase in vascular endothelial function	Penumathsa et al., 2008
	• suppression or slowing of progression and regression of atherosclerosis	Prasad and Jadhav, 2015
	• protective effects in a monocrotaline-induced model of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)	Puukila et al., 2017
Antidiabetic activity	• reduction of HbA1C in participants with type 2 diabetes	Pan et al., 2007, 2009
	• decrease in insulin and leptin concentrations	Fukumitsu et al., 2008
	• delay in the onset of diabetes by 80%	Prasad, 2001
Anticancer effects	• reduction of mammary tumor incidence	Chen et al., 2003
	• reduction of terminal end bud structures in the mammary gland	Ward et al., 2000; Tan et al., 2004
	• decrease in the expression of COLO 201 human colon cancer cells in athymic mice	Danbara et al., 2005
	• decrease in prostate-specific antigen level and cell proliferation	Demark-Wahnefried et al., 2004
	• suppression of cancer cell proliferation, migration, and metastasis	Chikara et al., 2017; Mali et al., 2017
Effects on mental stress	• reduction of plasma cortisol and small increase in plasma fibrinogen levels during mental stress	Spence et al., 2003; Imran et al., 2015
	• antidepressant-like effect of flaxseed SDG	Ma et al., 2013
Effects on the reproductive system	• reduction of immature ovarian relative weight and delay in puberty	Imran et al., 2015