Healthy diet helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease, dementia in mid-/late-life

Individuals who adhere to healthy dietary patterns in mid- to late-life may develop protection against the development of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia (ADRD), suggests a study.

The authors scored 92,849 participants for four predefined dietary pattern indices based on food frequency questionnaire responses at baseline (45‒75 years) and at a 10-year follow-up: the alternate Mediterranean diet (aMED), Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015), and Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet.

Finally, Cox proportional hazards models were used to explore the relationship between these dietary patterns and ADRD.

Over the follow-up period, higher baseline scores of the four dietary patterns among participants with 21,478 cases correlated with 4-percent to 9-percent reduced ADRD risk (aMED: hazard ratio [HR], 0.91, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.87‒0.95; DASH: HR, 0.96, 95 percent CI, 0.92‒1.01; HEI-2015: HR, 0.94, 95 percent CI, 0.90‒0.98; MIND: HR, 0.91, 95 percent CI, 0.87‒0.96).

Stronger associations were noted in African American, Latino, and White participants than in Japanese American and Native Hawaiian participants.

In a subset of 45,065 participants with 8,360 cases, improvements in dietary patterns over 10 years resulted in 11-percent to 25-percent lower risk across the four indices, “with similar racial and ethnic differences as observed for baseline diet, but consistent for younger (<60 years at baseline) and older age groups,” according to the authors.

“The racial and ethnic heterogeneity in the relationships observed warrants further study,” they added.