All groups of mice were fed these diets for 14 days before the researchers inoculated them with C. albicans, and they continued on their respective diets for 21 more days.
Results showed that 21 days after the inoculation, the mice that were fed the coconut oil diet had C. albicans colonization in their stomachs that was significantly lower than the mice that were fed the beef tallow diet, the soybean oil diet or the standard diet.
Prof. Kumamoto notes that there "was about a 10-fold drop in colonization" in the mice that ate coconut oil, compared with those that ate either beef fat or soy bean oil.
In a further experiment, she and her team switched the mice on the beef fat diet to the coconut oil diet and found that just 4 days after the diet change, "the colonization changed so it looked almost exactly like what you saw in a mouse who had been on coconut oil the entire time.