Supplement evidence

115 / 575Cardiometabolic

Red yeast rice

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The short answer

Products containing monacolin K can lower LDL but act like lovastatin and vary unpredictably.

Evidence and scope: Conditional or population-specific
This status does not grade the ingredient for every goal, outcome, or person.
Important limitation: Benefit depends on the population, formulation, baseline status, and objective; results should not be generalized.
Before deciding: Key concern: Do not combine with statins, pregnancy, liver disease, CYP3A4 inhibitors, grapefruit, or heavy alcohol.

01 / PRACTICAL GUIDE

Dose, absorption, and combinations

These are indication-specific reference or studied ranges—not a personalized prescription. Start with the objective, then check the form, label, medicines, and health conditions.

Reference range by objective

LDL cholesterolNo safe universal consumer dose; monacolin content must be known

Reference or studied range—not a personalized prescription. The product label or a clinician may specify a different dose.

Dose source ↗

More is not automatically better. A clinician or product label may specify a different amount.

Absorption / solubilityFat-soluble / lipid-based

Fat-soluble or lipid-based. Absorption generally improves with a meal containing fat.

How it is commonly taken

Use only with clinician and quality-control review.

Do not combine casually

Do not combine with statins, pregnancy, liver disease, CYP3A4 inhibitors, grapefruit, or heavy alcohol.

Dose and use source ↗

Dose and use links lead to primary or official source material. Search links are discovery tools, not proof that every returned paper applies.

02 / EVIDENCE

What the research says

We keep supportive, mixed, negative, safety, and contextual findings together. The headline never replaces the underlying papers.

2research papers in this ledger

14unique primary studies represented

—unique participants represented

These are audited counts for this JIVANA collection, not search-result totals. Participants are counted once when multiple papers use the same cohort; review papers are not added again to participant totals.

Open the research timelineResearch timeline

Entries are ordered by publication year. A study period appears only when the source reports it.

2024

Mixed or qualifiedPMID 38794691

Red yeast rice extract for hypercholesterolemia

Total and LDL cholesterol fell by about 37 and 36 mg/dL, while HDL, triglycerides, and apolipoproteins did not improve. Short trials cannot establish cardiovascular-event benefit or rare statin-like harms, and results apply only to the tested extracts.

Published: 2024Duration: 4–24 weeks14 primary studies represented

Study design and methods

Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis of 14 double-blind clinical trials
Population: Adults studied for lipid outcomes; the abstract did not report a pooled participant total
Intervention: Red yeast rice extracts versus placebo or control
Outcome: Total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, apolipoproteins, and short-term adverse events

Open research record ↗

2017

Safety signalPMID 28641460

Monacolin K variability in retail red yeast rice supplements

Two products had no detectable monacolin K; the other 26 varied more than 60-fold by weight and more than 120-fold per recommended daily serving. Retail labels therefore do not reliably reproduce trial exposure or permit predictable statin-like risk.

Published: 2017

Study design and methods

Design: Laboratory analysis of 28 mainstream retail supplement brands
Population: Commercial products; no human participants
Intervention: Measured monacolin K content per labeled red yeast rice serving
Outcome: Presence and amount of monacolin K, the compound identical to lovastatin

Open research record ↗

Unscreened discovery appendix—not evidence74 candidate publicationsSearch run: Aug 21, 2026

Complete for the displayed PubMed query at the search timestamp—not for all databases or every possible synonym. Candidates can be irrelevant, duplicate the same study, or report negative findings. They are never summed as evidence or participants until screened.

03 / SOURCES

Start with the source material

Official evidence overviewPubMed bounded human-evidence search Live PubMed discovery searchNational Library of Medicine

The live search is for discovery only. Search-result counts change and are not included in the audited totals above.

Recent PubMed discovery recordsDirect links to the first 12 records returned by the reproducible search. These are discovery candidates—not reviewed summaries or a count of supportive findings.

04 / EXPERT CONTEXT

Expert context—not evidence

Expert positions are dated context—not scientific evidence. They never raise the evidence status or become consensus by repetition.

No direct, source-verified endorsement is currently recorded. Research authorship or discussion alone is not treated as endorsement.