Clinical Trials Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Feb 26, 2017; 9(2): 162-166
Published online Feb 26, 2017. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v9.i2.162
Consumption of energy beverage is associated with attenuation of arterial endothelial flow-mediated dilatation
John P Higgins, Benjamin Yang, Nikki E Herrin, Santi Yarlagadda, George T Le, Brandon L Ortiz, Asif Ali, Stephen C Infanger
John P Higgins, Nikki E Herrin, Santi Yarlagadda, Brandon L Ortiz, Asif Ali, Department of Internal Medicine, McGovern Medical School, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Benjamin Yang, George T Le, Stephen C Infanger, McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Author contributions: Higgins JP, Yang B, Herrin NE, Yarlagadda S, Le GT, Ortiz BL, Ali A and Infanger SC contributed equally to this work, to the design and research, to data analysis, and writing of the paper.
Supported by McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, 7000 Fannin St #1200, Houston, TX 77030, University of Texas, No. 130744.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors has received fees for serving as a speaker, advisory board member, or owns stocks or patents.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at john.p.higgins@uth.tmc.edu. Participants consent was not obtained but the presented data are anonymized and risk of identification is low.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: John P Higgins, MD, MBA, MPhil, FACC, FACP, FAHA, FACSM, FSGC, FASNC, Associate Professor of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, LBJ General Hospital, 5656 Kelley St, UT Annex-Room 104, Houston, TX 77030, United States. john.p.higgins@uth.tmc.edu
Telephone: +1-713-5006549 Fax: +1-713-5005912
Received: July 1, 2016
Peer-review started: July 3, 2016
First decision: August 5, 2016
Revised: November 16, 2016
Accepted: November 20, 2016
Article in press: November 22, 2016
Published online: February 26, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: Energy drinks are being consumed worldwide, and are gaining in popularity, especially amongst youth. We studied the acute effects that one energy drink has on endothelial function, a measure of vascular health. We found that consumption of a single 24-oz can of Monster Energy resulted in attenuation of brachial artery endothelium-dependent flow mediated dilatation in 11 healthy volunteers.