CLEVELAND, April 10 (UPI) -- A compound abundant in red meat and added as a supplement to energy drinks may promote the hardening of the arteries, U.S. researchers say.
Dr. Stanley Hazen of the Cleveland Clinic and Robert Koeth, a medical student at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University, said the bacteria living in the human digestive tract metabolize the compound carnitine, turning it into trimethylamine-N-oxide, or TMAO, a metabolite the researchers previously linked in a study to the promotion of atherosclerosis -- hardening of the arteries.