Lower risk of dementia with Mediterranean diet

A study published in the journal BMC Medicine A traditional Mediterranean diet, which includes foods such as seafood, fruits, vegetables and nuts, has been shown to be associated with a lower risk of dementia. Participants who followed a Mediterranean diet had a 23% lower risk of dementia than participants who followed a less restrictive diet.

According to a 2019 report by Alzheimer’s International, 800,000 people in Spain suffer from dementia. This number is likely to increase in the future given the aging of the population and the increase in the number of people at high risk of dementia.

Diet may be an important and modifiable risk factor for dementia that can help prevent disease and reduce risk. Previous studies on the impact of the Mediterranean diet have been limited to small sample sizes and small numbers of dementia cases.

Researchers at the University of Newcastle analyzed data from 60,298 individuals from the UK Biobank in the United Kingdom. Using two measurement methods, they looked at how well participants followed the Mediterranean diet.

During more than nine years of follow-up, there were 882 cases of dementia. The researchers looked at each person’s genetic risk by counting how many different genes were associated with dementia risk. They call this “polygenetic risk.”

No Strike contact Between polygenetic risk of dementia and adherence to the Mediterranean diet. According to the researchers, this suggests that the association between high adherence to the Mediterranean diet and lower risk of dementia persists regardless of individual genetic risk of dementia.

However, this result was not consistent across all sensitivity analyzes and the authors believe that more research is needed to assess the interactions between diet and genetics on dementia risk. The authors also caution that their analysis was limited to individuals who reported their ethnicity as white, British or Irish, as only genetic data based on European ancestry was available. Further research in different populations is needed to determine potential benefit.

Based on their data, the researchers conclude that a Mediterranean diet with high consumption of healthy plant-based foods may be an important intervention to reduce dementia risk in future strategies.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *