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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Oliver Shannon, Professor Emma Stevenson, Dr Graciela Muniz Terrera
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2024 The Authors. European Journal of Neurology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Academy of Neurology.Background and purpose: The Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) has been associated with reduced dementia incidence in several studies. It is important to understand if diet is associated with brain health in midlife, when Alzheimer's disease and related dementias are known to begin. Methods: This study used data from the PREVENT dementia programme. Three MedDiet scores were created (the Pyramid, Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener [MEDAS] and MEDAS continuous) from a self-reported food frequency questionnaire. Primary outcomes were hippocampal volume and cube-transformed white matter hyperintensity volume. Secondary outcomes included cornu ammonis 1 and subiculum hippocampal subfield volumes, cortical thickness and measures of cognition. Sex-stratified analyses were run to explore differential associations between diet and brain health by sex. An exploratory path analysis was conducted to study if any associations between diet and brain health were mediated by cardiovascular risk factors for dementia. Results: In all, 504 participants were included in this analysis, with a mean Pyramid score of 8.10 (SD 1.56). There were no significant associations between any MedDiet scoring method and any of the primary or secondary outcomes. There were no differences by sex in any analyses and no significant mediation between the Pyramid score and global cognition by cardiovascular risk factors. Conclusions: Overall, this study did not find evidence for an association between the MedDiet and either neuroimaging or cognition in a midlife population study. Future work should investigate associations between the MedDiet and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias biomarkers as well as functional neuroimaging in a midlife population.
Author(s): Gregory S, Buller-Peralta I, Bridgeman K, Gongora VDLC, Dounavi M-E, Low A, Ntailianis G, O'Brien J, Parra MA, Ritchie CW, Ritchie K, Shannon OM, Stevenson EJ, Muniz-Terrera G
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: European Journal of Neurology
Year: 2024
Issue: ePub ahead of Print
Online publication date: 25/05/2024
Acceptance date: 02/05/2024
Date deposited: 11/06/2024
ISSN (print): 1351-5101
ISSN (electronic): 1468-1331
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc
URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ene.16345
DOI: 10.1111/ene.16345
PubMed id: 38794967
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