Apple Pectin
Apple pectin is the soluble fibre that makes jam set: a long chain built mostly from galacturonic acid, extracted from the pulp left over after apples are pressed for juice and sold as a powder or capsule. The honest evidence is narrower than the videos promise. About 6 g a day modestly lowers LDL cholesterol, a few small trials suggest it can firm up some kinds of diarrhoea and ease diarrhoea-type IBS, and almost all of it is fermented by your gut bacteria. The “heavy-metal detox” and radiation claims rest on a handful of small studies with real design problems, and none of it adds up to a miracle.
This page is about pectin as a fibre and as a supplement. For the cholesterol trials in full detail — including the Danish study in which whole apples and clear apple juice moved LDL in opposite directions — see Apple Pectin, Soluble Fibre, and Cholesterol. For the fruit itself, see Apples.
Table of Contents
- What Apple Pectin Is
- A Short History: Jam, Medicine and Chernobyl
- What Pectin Does in Your Gut
- Cholesterol and Blood Sugar: The Best-Proven Effects
- Diarrhoea and IBS: Small Trials, Named Honestly
- Heavy Metals and Radioactive Caesium
- What “Detox” Can and Cannot Mean
- Whole Apples, Powder and Dose
- Myths and Overclaims
- Safety, Interactions and Who Should Be Careful
- Key Research Papers
- Connections
- Featured Videos
What Apple Pectin Is
Pectin is not a vitamin, an enzyme or a drug. It is a fibre — one of the structural carbohydrates in the walls of plant cells, concentrated in the layer of “glue” that holds neighbouring cells together. It is why an unripe apple is hard and a ripe one yields, and why fruit boiled with sugar sets into jam.
Chemically, pectin is a family of long chains built mostly from galacturonic acid, a sugar acid, with occasional kinks of another sugar (rhamnose) and side-branches of neutral sugars. Food-grade pectin sold in the EU, where it is the food additive E 440, must be at least 65% galacturonic acid. Some of the acid groups along the chain carry a small methyl group, and the share that do — the degree of esterification, or DE — sorts commercial pectin into two families:
- High-methoxyl pectin: more than half of the acid groups methylated, typically 55–75%. This is the kind that sets with sugar and acid in classic jam.
- Low-methoxyl pectin: fewer than half methylated, typically 20–40%. It sets with calcium instead of sugar.
Chain length matters too: commercial pectins run from roughly 50,000 to 200,000 in molecular weight. These two numbers are not trivia. In the cholesterol trials described below, long-chain, high-DE pectin worked best and pectin stripped of its methyl groups worked least.
Where it comes from. Commercial pectin is made mainly from three by-products of the juice and sugar industries: apple pomace (the pulp left after pressing), citrus peel and sugar beet. The raw material is steeped in hot, acidified water; the dissolved pectin is filtered off, usually precipitated with alcohol, then dried and milled into the off-white to light-brown powder sold as a supplement or for jam-making.
Apple versus citrus. They are close cousins. When researchers in Maastricht tested well-characterised pectins head to head in adults with mildly raised cholesterol, high-DE apple pectin and high-DE citrus pectin performed the same; the structure mattered more than the fruit. A label that says “apple pectin” tells you which fruit it came from, not its DE or chain length — the two properties the trials show actually matter. The orange side of the story is on Oranges: Fiber, Pectin and Limonoids.
Modified citrus pectin is a different product. Sold as MCP, it is citrus pectin that has been deliberately broken down. The version tested in the metal-excretion pilot described further down had an average molecular weight of about 15,400 and a degree of esterification of 3.8% (Phytotherapy Research, 2006) — short chains carrying almost none of the methyl groups that make high-DE pectin effective against cholesterol. Its research proposes effects beyond the gut, such as “systemic chelation” of metals, which is a different claim from anything ordinary pectin does in the intestine. Evidence about one does not transfer to the other, in either direction.
A Short History: Jam, Medicine and Chernobyl
The French chemist Louis Nicolas Vauquelin first isolated a jelly-forming substance from tamarind fruit in 1790, and in 1825 Henri Braconnot gave it its name, from the Greek pektikos, “congealed.” Cooks had been using it without knowing it for centuries: apples, quinces and citrus peel set jams and jellies because they are rich in it. Once juice pressing became industrial, the leftover apple pulp and citrus peel became the raw material for commercial pectin, and they still are.
Pectin also had a medical career. Kaolin-and-pectin mixtures were a familiar pharmacy remedy for diarrhoea through much of the twentieth century, and in Europe pectin is still an active ingredient in some antidiarrhoeal medicines, including combination products, and in products for regurgitation in babies (as reported by the European Medicines Agency to the European Food Safety Authority in 2017).
The detox reputation comes largely from the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl reactor accident. From the mid-1990s, apple-pectin preparations were given to children living in contaminated areas of Ukraine and Belarus to try to lower the radioactive caesium in their bodies; one of the Belarusian trial reports states that some 70,000 children there had received up to four one-month courses a year. The studies behind that programme are examined in detail below, because they are the root of today’s “pulls toxins out of your body” claims.
Evidence tier: a long history of use in food and medicine tells you pectin is safe to eat in food amounts. It does not, on its own, show that any particular health claim works.
What Pectin Does in Your Gut
It passes through the small intestine largely intact. Human digestive enzymes cannot break pectin down. In a 1983 study of six people with an ileostomy — a surgical opening that lets researchers collect exactly what leaves the small intestine — 70–100% of the pectin they ate came out the far end of the small intestine, and it carried water with it: output rose by about 300 g a day on 15 g of citrus pectin.
It forms a gel that traps bile acids. Pectin thickens the gut contents into a viscous gel, and that gel holds on to the bile acids your liver releases to digest fat. In a classic 1979 metabolic study, five healthy young men ate a controlled diet with 36 g of pectin a day added for six weeks. The bile acids in their stools rose by 35% — the mechanism behind pectin’s effect on cholesterol, below.
Then your colon bacteria eat it — all of it. The same study found no extra fibre in the men’s stools when pectin was added: it had been fermented completely by the colon’s bacteria. Stool weight rose by a third, which the authors suggested may reflect extra bacterial mass, but stool frequency and transit time did not change. Pectin is not a bulking laxative the way psyllium or bran is; it is food for bacteria. The men did notice it: they reported a feeling of abdominal distension and a considerable increase in wind.
What fermentation makes. Bacteria turn fermentable fibre into gas and into short-chain fatty acids — mainly acetate, propionate and butyrate. Butyrate is a favoured fuel of the cells lining the colon, and short-chain fatty acids help the colon absorb salt and water, which is one reason fermentable fibres are studied in diarrhoea. The animation The Gut Barrier and Your Microbiome shows the process, and Resistant Starches covers the other big family of fermentable carbohydrates.
Does a pectin supplement change your microbiome? Less settled than the labels suggest. A well-run Dutch trial published in 2019 gave 52 young adults and 48 older adults either 15 g of sugar-beet pectin or a maltodextrin placebo every day for four weeks, double-blind. Faecal bacteria, short-chain fatty acid levels and the compounds in their breath did not change significantly. Sugar-beet pectin is structurally different from apple pectin, so this does not settle the question for apples — but it is a fair warning that “prebiotic” on a label is a hope, not a guarantee. What whole apples do to gut bacteria is covered on Apples, the Gut Microbiome, and Satiety.
Evidence tier: small human metabolic studies for what happens to pectin in the gut (solid, if small); one randomised controlled trial in humans that found no change in gut bacteria or short-chain fatty acids from a pectin supplement.
Cholesterol and Blood Sugar: The Best-Proven Effects
If apple pectin has one genuinely well-evidenced effect, it is on LDL cholesterol, and it follows directly from the bile-acid trap above. Bile acids are made from cholesterol. When pectin carries more of them out in the stool, the liver has to make replacements, and to get the raw material it pulls LDL particles out of the blood. It is the same principle as the prescription bile-acid-binding drugs, at a food dose.
The trials. A Maastricht group ran crossover trials in adults with mildly raised cholesterol, published in 2012. With 15 g of pectin a day for four weeks, compared with a cellulose control, LDL fell by 7–10% — but only with the high-DE (about 70%) apple and citrus pectins. Lower-DE pectins did less, a short-chain pectin did less, and pectin with its methyl groups removed entirely did least of all. A follow-up trial at 6 g a day for three weeks lowered LDL by 6–7% with high-DE, long-chain pectin. The researchers concluded that source and structure change the result, which is why a supplement label that states neither leaves you guessing.
What the regulators accepted. The European Food Safety Authority’s nutrition panel reviewed the evidence and accepted a cause-and-effect link between pectin and the maintenance of normal blood cholesterol at 6 g of pectin a day, and between pectin and a smaller rise in blood sugar after a meal at 10 g of pectin with that meal (as summarised in EFSA’s 2017 re-evaluation of pectin). Ten grams in a single meal is a lot of fibre to eat at once.
Keeping it in proportion. A 6–10% fall in LDL is real and worthwhile inside a fibre-rich diet, but it is well short of what cholesterol-lowering drugs achieve, and nobody should stop a prescribed medicine on the strength of it. The whole-apple trials, the juice-versus-fruit comparison and the wider soluble-fibre evidence are laid out on Apple Pectin, Soluble Fibre, and Cholesterol; the wider picture is on Cholesterol Management.
Evidence tier: randomised controlled trials in humans (small, lasting weeks), backed by a formal regulatory review. This is the strongest claim on the page.
Diarrhoea and IBS: Small Trials, Named Honestly
Pectin’s old reputation as a diarrhoea remedy (diarrhea, in American spelling) has a plausible mechanism: the gel holds water, and the short-chain fatty acids made when bacteria ferment it help the colon absorb salt and water. The human trials are few and small, so here they are by name.
Babies with persistent diarrhoea (Dhaka, 2001)
Researchers in Bangladesh studied 62 boys aged 5 to 12 months who were in hospital with persistent diarrhoea (lasting 14 days or more). In a double-blind trial they were randomly given a rice-based diet with added pectin (19 boys), with cooked green banana (22 boys), or the rice diet alone (21 boys) for seven days. By day 3, 59% of the pectin group and 55% of the banana group had recovered, against 15% on rice alone; by day 4 the figures were 82%, 78% and 23%. Both treatment groups also passed less stool, needed less oral rehydration solution and intravenous fluid, and vomited less.
Two honest caveats. This was one hospital, in infants with a specific and serious illness, so it does not transfer automatically to an adult with a stomach bug or to IBS. And a humble whole food — green banana, rich in resistant starch — did just as well as the purified fibre (see Bananas: Resistant Starch, Green vs Ripe). A baby with diarrhoea lasting two weeks needs medical care, not a supplement.
Diarrhoea-predominant IBS (Nanjing, 2015)
A randomised trial at one hospital in Nanjing, China, gave 87 adults with diarrhoea-predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D) either 24 g of pectin powder a day (46 people) or a placebo (41 people) for six weeks. The pectin group had a greater fall in combined symptom scores, firmer stools on the Bristol stool scale and better quality-of-life scores; faecal bifidobacteria rose and clostridia fell; no significant side effects were reported. That is encouraging. The limits are real too: one centre, six weeks, published in Chinese (only the abstract is widely readable in English), an abstract that does not describe how or whether the trial was blinded, and no independent repeat that we could find. And 24 g a day is four times the cholesterol dose, so anyone trying it should build up slowly.
Whole apples and IBS are a different question
Whole apples are a classic high-FODMAP trigger in IBS because of their fructose and sorbitol. Purified pectin powder does not bring those sugars with it, but pectin is itself fermentable, so it can still produce gas. If you have IBS, start with a small amount and build up slowly. Pectin is also not an established constipation remedy: it is fermented rather than passed as bulk, and in the 1979 study 36 g a day did not change stool frequency or transit time in healthy men. For constipation, see Constipation; for the condition as a whole, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Chronic Diarrhea.
Evidence tier: two small randomised controlled trials in humans, both positive, in very different groups (hospitalised infants; adults with IBS-D), neither repeated at scale. Promising, not proven.
Heavy Metals and Radioactive Caesium
“Pulls heavy metals and radiation out of your body” is the claim the videos lean on hardest. The human evidence comes from two places: Belarusian children exposed to radioactive caesium after Chernobyl, and two pilot studies of modified citrus pectin and lead. Here is what each study actually did.
The Belarus children: the 2004 randomised trial
The best-known study (Swiss Medical Weekly, January 2004) enrolled 64 children from contaminated villages in the Gomel region during a one-month stay at a sanatorium, where they ate only uncontaminated food. They were randomly assigned, double-blind, to a teaspoon (5 g) twice a day of a milled dried-apple powder that was 15–16% pectin, or to a look-alike placebo powder, for three weeks. Body caesium-137, measured with a portable whole-body radiation counter, started at about 30 becquerels per kilogram in both groups. It fell by 62.6% in the pectin group and by 13.9% in the placebo group.
That is a striking difference, and it is fair to report it. The design limits, stated plainly:
- Small and short. 64 children, 58 of whom were measured at the end; three weeks of powder.
- A radiation count, not health. No symptom, illness or long-term outcome was measured.
- Every child also switched to clean food, which lowers caesium on its own — the placebo group’s levels fell too.
- Not much actual pectin. At 15–16% pectin, two 5 g teaspoons supplied roughly 1.5 g of pectin a day — a quarter of the 6 g a day linked to the cholesterol effect.
- One programme. The trial was carried out and measured by the Belarusian radiation-safety institute whose teams screen these children, and we could find no trial by an unconnected group in PubMed.
The follow-ups
A second 2004 report (Swiss Medical Weekly, December 2004) grouped 94 children aged 7 to 17 on a sanatorium holiday by their caesium level. Those in the moderate and high groups took about 5 g of a 16%-pectin powder twice a day for 16 days, and their caesium fell by 39% and 28%. There was no placebo group, so the fall cannot be separated from the clean food. Cardiovascular symptoms and blood pressure did not change; heart-tracing (ECG) patterns improved only when the two pectin groups were pooled. The authors themselves judged 16 days too short and planned a placebo-controlled trial.
A 2007 joint study (Radiation Protection Dosimetry), run with a German national research centre, was placebo-controlled and double-blind: children took a pectin preparation or a placebo for two weeks during a sanatorium stay. Caesium fell by about 33% on pectin and about 14% on placebo — a difference in pectin’s favour, about half the size reported in 2004, and still measured only as a radiation count.
A controlled animal test (Biochimie, 2006; animal study) injected rats with caesium-137 and then gave them apple pectin or Prussian blue in their drinking water for 11 days. Prussian blue raised the caesium in their droppings fivefold and cut what stayed in their organs. Apple pectin made no significant difference compared with untreated rats. Rats are not children and the set-up was different, so this does not cancel the human data — but it tested the proposed mechanism under controlled conditions, and the mechanism did not show up. Prussian blue is the drug the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved for internal contamination with radioactive caesium and with thallium (see Thallium).
Modified citrus pectin and lead: two pilots
A 2006 pilot study (Phytotherapy Research) gave healthy volunteers 15 g of modified citrus pectin a day for five days and 20 g on day six, and compared their 24-hour urine with their own starting samples; the abstract describes no placebo group. Urinary arsenic rose by 130% on day one and cadmium by 150% on day six. Lead rose by 560%, but that result fell short of statistical significance by the usual standard (p < 0.08). More metal in a few days’ urine is not the same thing as less metal in the body, and no health outcome was measured.
A 2008 study (Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine) gave children aged 5 to 12, in hospital with lead levels above 20 µg/dL, 15 g of modified citrus pectin a day in three doses, measuring lead in blood and 24-hour urine at 0, 14, 21 and 28 days. It reported a significant fall in blood lead and a rise in urinary lead. With a single group and no comparison, the study cannot separate any effect of the pectin from the effect of simply being in hospital, away from the lead sources at home. The abstract also reports the fall in blood lead as a “161% average change”, a figure that cannot describe a simple percentage fall — nothing falls by more than 100% — so the size of the effect is unclear. The authors called it a pilot and said further studies were justified. Both studies concern modified citrus pectin, not the apple pectin in your cupboard.
What it adds up to
For radioactive caesium: small, short studies from a single programme, a radiation count as the only outcome, and a negative controlled rat test. For a family living on contaminated food, the lasting fix is uncontaminated food, the source of the caesium in the first place; the extra effect of pectin is uncertain — large in one small trial, about half that size in the joint follow-up, absent in rats — and it has not been shown to improve health. For lead and other metals: two uncontrolled pilots of a different product, and no controlled human trial of ordinary apple pectin that we could find. If you are worried about lead, see Lead Poisoning and the Heavy Metals Panel: finding and removing the source comes first, and high levels are treated with prescription chelation under specialist care.
Evidence tier: radiocaesium — small randomised trials in humans measuring only a radiation count, plus one uncontrolled study and one negative animal study; lead and other metals — pilot studies without control groups, for modified citrus pectin only.
What “Detox” Can and Cannot Mean
“Detox” only means something when it names a substance, measures a change, and ideally shows a health result. Scored that way, here is apple pectin’s record:
- Bile acids — real. Pectin carries more bile acids out in the stool (35% more at 36 g a day), and that removal is the main way it lowers LDL. This is the one “binding and removal” effect with solid human evidence behind it.
- Minerals — real, and double-edged. Pectin’s acid groups bind some metal ions. In the ileostomy study, iron absorption fell while people took 15 g a day. Binding does not choose “bad” metals over the ones you need.
- Radioactive caesium — unproven. Small studies, a radiation count as the only outcome, and a controlled rat test that found nothing.
- Lead, arsenic, cadmium — unproven. Two uncontrolled pilots, both of modified citrus pectin rather than apple pectin.
- Unnamed “toxins” — no evidence. A claim that names no substance and measures nothing cannot be tested, so it cannot be supported.
The body’s real detoxification is done by the liver and kidneys; fibre helps mainly by what it carries out of the gut, chiefly bile acids. That is a genuine benefit worth having. It is not the same as flushing stored metals out of your bones or cleansing your organs. The wider debate is covered on Detox Protocols and Binders: Charcoal, Chlorella, and Beyond, and the metals themselves on Heavy Metals in Food.
Whole Apples, Powder and Dose
The whole fruit first
According to USDA FoodData Central, raw apple with its skin carries 2.4 g of fibre per 100 g, so a medium apple (182 g) gives you about 4.4 g of fibre for about 95 kcal. Peeled apple carries only 1.3 g per 100 g — the skin and the layer just beneath it hold a large share of the fibre, so wash the apple and eat it whole. Only part of that fibre is pectin; the rest is cellulose and related insoluble fibres, which add bulk. The fruit also brings polyphenols, potassium and the chewing and fullness a powder cannot copy.
Getting close to the trial amounts from food means a genuinely fibre-rich diet rather than a single apple: apples and pears, citrus fruit including some of the white pith, carrots, plus the other soluble fibres in oats, barley, beans, lentils and brown rice. Clear apple juice is not a pectin source: it is clarified with enzymes that break the pectin down. Cloudy juice keeps a little more; whole fruit beats both.
Pectin powder: the amounts the studies used
- 6 g a day — the amount EFSA links to maintaining normal cholesterol; LDL fell 6–7% in a three-week trial.
- 10 g with a meal — the amount EFSA links to a smaller rise in blood sugar after that meal.
- 15 g a day — the four-week cholesterol trials (7–10% LDL reduction with high-DE pectin).
- 24 g a day — the six-week IBS-D trial.
- 36 g a day — the 1979 metabolic study in five men, who reported bloating and much more wind.
How to take it. Start low — a gram or two a day — and build up over one to two weeks; wind and bloating are much easier to live with when the increase is gradual. Weigh it on a kitchen scale the first few times; scoops and teaspoons vary between products. Pectin clumps when dumped into water, so sprinkle it slowly into a full glass while stirring, or stir it into porridge, plain yoghurt or stewed fruit, and drink extra fluid. Splitting the day’s amount between meals is easier on the gut.
Read the label. Jam-making pectin is formulated to set jam and may carry added sugar or other ingredients; a supplement should state the grams of pectin per daily serving, which you can compare with the amounts above. And remember that modified citrus pectin is a different product with different claims.
Timing. Take regular medicines at least two hours apart from pectin, and take iron supplements at a different time of day (see Safety).
Myths and Overclaims
- “Apple pectin has miraculous healing benefits.” No trial shows anything miraculous. Its best-supported effect is a 6–10% fall in LDL cholesterol at 6–15 g a day — useful, modest, and achievable with food.
- “It is the most underrated detox supplement.” The only removal effect with solid human evidence is bile acids. The metal and radiation evidence is pilot-level (for a different product) or small and limited to a radiation count, with a negative controlled rat test.
- “Take apple pectin every day to detoxify your body.” Daily pectin in food amounts is safe for most people, and a fibre-rich diet is a good daily habit. The reason to do it is fibre and cholesterol, not detoxification.
- “Apple pectin cures IBS.” One small six-week trial in diarrhoea-type IBS, at 24 g a day, was positive. That is a reason to try a slowly increased dose, not a cure — and IBS has several subtypes that respond differently.
- “It pulls heavy metals and radiation out of your body.” No controlled human trial of ordinary apple pectin that we could find shows lower lead or mercury in the body; the radiocaesium studies had the design limits described above.
- “Apple pectin and modified citrus pectin are the same thing.” They are not. Modified citrus pectin is chopped into short chains with almost no methyl groups; the long-chain, high-DE pectin that lowers cholesterol is the opposite.
- “Apple juice gives you the pectin.” Clear juice has had its pectin broken down deliberately. Eat the apple.
Safety, Interactions and Who Should Be Careful
The overall safety picture is good. In its 2017 re-evaluation, the European Food Safety Authority found no safety concern for pectin as a food additive for the general population and no need to set a numerical acceptable daily intake. Pectin is not absorbed intact; it is fermented by gut bacteria. The panel did not consider food-grade pectin allergenic. Its main human safety data point was 36 g a day for six weeks, which caused abdominal distension and more wind in some people — unpleasant rather than harmful.
Side effects
Bloating, wind and cramping are the common complaints, and they are worst when people jump straight to trial-sized doses. Start low and increase slowly. Because pectin thickens liquids, take powders with plenty of fluid; anyone who has trouble swallowing, or who has been told they have a narrowing of the gullet or bowel, should not use fibre powders without medical advice.
Medicines
A review of food–drug interactions with statin drugs reports that taking pectin (or oat bran) together with the cholesterol drug lovastatin reduces how much of the drug is absorbed. A sensible general rule for any viscous fibre supplement is to take regular medicines at least two hours apart from it, and to ask a pharmacist about any medicine where small changes in absorption matter.
Minerals
In the ileostomy study, iron absorption fell significantly while people took 15 g of citrus pectin a day; phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and zinc were unchanged. In the six-week metabolic study, calcium balance stayed the same at 36 g a day. The practical upshot: take iron supplements at a different time of day from pectin, especially if you are being treated for iron-deficiency anaemia.
Who should be careful
- Babies and children: use food, not supplements, unless a clinician advises otherwise. The infant diarrhoea trial was done in hospital under medical care.
- People with IBS: start with a very small amount; fermentable fibre can make gas and bloating worse before it helps.
- People on regular medicines or iron: separate the timing, as above.
- Pregnancy and breastfeeding: pectin from fruit is part of a normal diet; there is little specific research on high-dose pectin supplements in pregnancy or breastfeeding, so food amounts are the sensible choice.
- Anyone facing lead exposure, radiation exposure or high cholesterol that needs treatment: pectin is not a substitute for medical care. Proper testing and proven treatment come first.
Key Research Papers
- EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food (ANS), Mortensen A, Aguilar F, Crebelli R, et al. (2017). Re-evaluation of pectin (E 440i) and amidated pectin (E 440ii) as food additives. EFSA Journal, 15(7):e04866. — PubMed PMID: 32625540 (regulatory safety review)
- Cummings JH, Southgate DA, Branch WJ, Wiggins HS, Houston H, Jenkins DJ, et al. (1979). The digestion of pectin in the human gut and its effect on calcium absorption and large bowel function. British Journal of Nutrition, 41(3):477–485. — PubMed PMID: 37887 (human metabolic study, 5 men)
- Sandberg AS, Ahderinne R, Andersson H, Hallgren B, Hultén L. (1983). The effect of citrus pectin on the absorption of nutrients in the small intestine. Human Nutrition: Clinical Nutrition, 37(3):171–183. — PubMed PMID: 6307932 (human study, 6 ileostomy patients)
- An R, Wilms E, Smolinska A, Hermes GDA, Masclee AAM, de Vos P, et al. (2019). Sugar Beet Pectin Supplementation Did Not Alter Profiles of Fecal Microbiota and Exhaled Breath in Healthy Young Adults and Healthy Elderly. Nutrients, 11(9):2193. — PubMed PMID: 31547291 (randomised controlled trial, null result)
- Brouns F, Theuwissen E, Adam A, Bell M, Berger A, Mensink RP. (2012). Cholesterol-lowering properties of different pectin types in mildly hyper-cholesterolemic men and women. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 66(5):591–599. — PubMed PMID: 22190137 (randomised crossover trials)
- Rabbani GH, Teka T, Zaman B, Majid N, Khatun M, Fuchs GJ. (2001). Clinical studies in persistent diarrhea: dietary management with green banana or pectin in Bangladeshi children. Gastroenterology, 121(3):554–560. — PubMed PMID: 11522739 (randomised controlled trial, 62 infants)
- Xu L, Yu W, Jiang J, Feng X, Li N. (2015). Efficacy of pectin in the treatment of diarrhea predominant irritable bowel syndrome [article in Chinese]. Zhonghua Wei Chang Wai Ke Za Zhi (Chinese Journal of Gastrointestinal Surgery), 18(3):267–271. — PubMed PMID: 25809332 (randomised controlled trial, 87 adults)
- Nesterenko VB, Nesterenko AV, Babenko VI, Yerkovich TV, Babenko IV. (2004). Reducing the 137Cs-load in the organism of “Chernobyl” children with apple-pectin. Swiss Medical Weekly, 134(1–2):24–27. — PubMed PMID: 14745664 (randomised controlled trial, 64 children; radiation count only)
- Bandazhevskaya GS, Nesterenko VB, Babenko VI, Yerkovich TV, Bandazhevsky YI. (2004). Relationship between caesium (137Cs) load, cardiovascular symptoms, and source of food in ‘Chernobyl’ children — preliminary observations after intake of oral apple pectin. Swiss Medical Weekly, 134(49–50):725–729. — PubMed PMID: 15635491 (no placebo group)
- Hill P, Schläger M, Vogel V, Hille R, Nesterenko AV, Nesterenko VB. (2007). Studies on the current 137Cs body burden of children in Belarus — can the dose be further reduced? Radiation Protection Dosimetry, 125(1–4):523–526. — PubMed PMID: 17314090 (placebo-controlled study)
- Le Gall B, Taran F, Renault D, Wilk JC, Ansoborlo E. (2006). Comparison of Prussian blue and apple-pectin efficacy on 137Cs decorporation in rats. Biochimie, 88(11):1837–1841. — PubMed PMID: 17069947 (animal study)
- Eliaz I, Hotchkiss AT, Fishman ML, Rode D. (2006). The effect of modified citrus pectin on urinary excretion of toxic elements. Phytotherapy Research, 20(10):859–864. — PubMed PMID: 16835878 (pilot study, no control group)
- Zhao ZY, Liang L, Fan X, Yu Z, Hotchkiss AT, Wilk BJ, et al. (2008). The role of modified citrus pectin as an effective chelator of lead in children hospitalized with toxic lead levels. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 14(4):34–38. — PubMed PMID: 18616067 (pilot study, no control group)
- Vaquero MP, Sánchez Muniz FJ, Jiménez Redondo S, Prats Oliván P, Higueras FJ, Bastida S. (2010). Major diet-drug interactions affecting the kinetic characteristics and hypolipidaemic properties of statins. Nutrición Hospitalaria, 25(2):193–206. — PubMed PMID: 20449528 (review)