Chronic venous insufficiency is a vascular disorder characterized by severely compromised blood return and venous hypertension. It very commonly occurs in diabetics. The powerful flavonoid antioxidant pine bark extract not only helps, it may help more than conventional treatment.
Compression stockings are a common treatment for chronic venous insufficiency (CVI). This study wanted to see if pine bark extract worked as well as compression in diabetics with CVI.
58 people treated their CVI either with standard management plus elastic compression stockings or standard management plus 150mg a day of pine bark extract as Pycnogenol for 8 weeks.
Blood flow through the skin while resting (skin resting flux) and rate of ankle swelling improved significantly more in the Pycnogenol group. Microcirculation of oxygenated blood (microcirculatory perfusion) was significantly more improved in the Pycnogenol group.
That the improvement in scores was significantly better for Pycnogenol on the Composite Symptom Score, the venous Clinical severity Score, and the Venous Disability Score indicates a superior clinical effect than for compression.
The pine bark extract was safe, and compliance was greater than compression. Only 73% of people could tolerate the stockings, while 98.5% of the Pycnogenol capsules were taken correctly.
This study suggests that pine bark may be a more effective, easier to use part of chronic venous insufficiency treatmetn in diabetics than compression stockings.
Minerva Surg. 2024 Sep 11. doi:10.23736/S2724-5691.24.10444-3.