Consumption of olive oil within the Mediterranean diet has been long known to have many health benefits. However, only over the last decade has epidemiological research confirmed its protective role ...against developing several chronic diseases. The objective of this review was to give an overview of the state of art epidemiological evidence concerning the relationship between olive oil and key public health outcomes including mortality, CVD, diabetes, metabolic syndrome (MetS), obesity and cancer, with a particular focus on recent results from cohort studies and dietary intervention trials. Recent epidemiological research has shown that regular consumption of olive oil is associated with increased longevity. This benefit is partly due to the olive oil's unequivocal cardio-protective role. There is converging evidence on the benefits of olive oil for preventing several CVD risk factors, including diabetes, MetS and obesity. Olive oil is also implicated in preventing certain cancers, with the most promising findings for breast and digestive tract cancers, although the data are still not entirely consistent and mainly from case-control studies. These health benefits are supported by strong mechanistic evidence from experimental studies, demonstrating that specific components of olive oil have antihypertensive, antithrombotic, antioxidant, antiinflammatory and anticarcinogenic action. Despite the accumulating epidemiological research, there is still a lack of consistent results from high-quality studies for many health outcomes (i.e. certain cancers and metabolism-related disorders). Further research is mandatory, above all from prospective studies and randomised dietary intervention trials when feasible, to confirm some of the still potential health benefits.
To investigate the relationship between the dietary approaches to stop hypertension (DASH)-style dietary patterns in childhood and cardiometabolic risk (CMR) in adolescence/early adulthood.
Data were ...obtained from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) prospective cohort. Diet diary data collected at 7, 10 and 13 years were used to calculate DASH-style diet scores (DDS). Multivariable linear regression models were used to investigate the associations between the DDS at 7, 10 and 13 years and CMR scores, calculated at 17 and 24 years.
The ALSPAC cohort included children born in south-west England in 1991-1992.
Children with complete dietary, covariate and cardiometabolic data at 17 (
1,526) and 24 years (
1,524).
A higher DDS at 7 and 10 years was negatively associated with CMR scores at 17 years (
= -0·64 (95 % CI -1·27, -0·006),
=0·027 for fifth
. first DDS quintile at 7 years;
= -0·73 (95 % CI -1·35, -0·12) and
=0·037 for fifth
. first DDS quintile at 10 years) and at 24 years (
= -0·92 (95 % CI -1·49, -0·34)
= 0·001 for fifth
. first DDS quintile at 7 years;
= -0·60 (95 % CI -1·20, -0·05)
= 0·092 for fifth
. first DDS quintile at 10 years). No associations were found between the DDS at 13 years and CMR score at 17 and 24 years.
Greater adherence with a DASH-style diet during childhood was associated with better cardiometabolic health in adolescence/adulthood in the ALSPAC cohort. The components of the DASH diet could be recommended to improve children's cardiometabolic health.
Dietary intake during early life may be a modifying factor for cardiometabolic risk (CMR). Metabolomic profiling may enable more precise identification of CMR in adolescence than traditional CMR ...scores. We aim to assess and compare the prospective associations between an obesogenic dietary pattern (DP) score at age 13 years with a novel vs. traditional CMR score in adolescence and young adulthood in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC).
Study participants were ALSPAC children with diet diary data at age 13. The obesogenic DP z-score, characterized by high energy-density, high % of energy from total fat and free sugars, and low fibre density, was previously derived using reduced rank regression. CMR scores were calculated by combining novel metabolites or traditional risk factors (fat mass index, insulin resistance, mean arterial blood pressure, triacylglycerol, HDL and LDL cholesterol) at age 15 (n = 1808), 17 (n = 1629), and 24 years (n = 1760). Multivariable linear regression models estimated associations of DP z-score with log-transformed CMR z-scores.
Compared to the lowest tertile, the highest DP z-score tertile at age 13 was associated with an increase in the metabolomics CMR z-score at age 15 (β = 0.20, 95% CI 0.09, 0.32, p trend < 0.001) and at age 17 (β = 0.22, 95% CI 0.10, 0.34, p trend < 0.001), and with the traditional CMR z-score at age 15 (β = 0.15, 95% CI 0.05, 0.24, p trend 0.020). There was no evidence of an association at age 17 for the traditional CMR z-score (β = 0.07, 95% CI -0.03, 0.16, p trend 0.137) or for both scores at age 24.
An obesogenic DP was associated with greater CMR in adolescents. Stronger associations were observed with a novel metabolite CMR score compared to traditional risk factors. There may be benefits from modifying diet during adolescence for CMR health, which should be prioritized for further research in trials.
Misreporting characterized by the reporting of implausible energy intakes may undermine the valid estimation of diet-disease relations, but the methods to best identify and account for misreporting ...are unknown. The present study compared how alternate approaches affected associations between selected dietary factors and body mass index (BMI) by using data from the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition-Spain. A total of 24,332 women and 15,061 men 29-65 years of age recruited from 1992 to 1996 for whom measured height and weight and validated diet history data were available were included. Misreporters were identified on the basis of disparities between reported energy intakes and estimated requirements calculated using the original Goldberg method and 2 alternatives: one that substituted basal metabolic rate equations that are more valid at higher BMIs and another that used doubly labeled water-predicted total energy expenditure equations. Compared with results obtained using the original method, underreporting was considerably lower and overreporting higher with alternative methods, which were highly concordant. Accounting for misreporters with all methods yielded diet-BMI relations that were more consistent with expectations; alternative methods often strengthened associations. For example, among women, multivariable-adjusted differences in BMI for the highest versus lowest vegetable intake tertile (β = 0.37 (standard error, 0.07)) were neutral after adjusting with the original method (β = 0.01 (standard error, 07)) and negative using the predicted total energy expenditure method with stringent cutoffs (β = -0.15 (standard error, 0.07)). Alternative methods may yield more valid associations between diet and obesity-related outcomes.
The aim of this article was to summarize the evidence concerning the association between Mediterranean dietary pattern and cancer risk in observational epidemiological studies. All the studies that ...met the following criteria were reviewed: human cohort and case-control studies that examined the effect of the Mediterranean diet as an entire food pattern (the combined effect of individual components of the Mediterranean diet) and whose results were published in English. Out of the 12 reviewed studies (7 cohort and 5 case-control), 10 studies (6 cohort and 4 case-control) provided some evidence that the Mediterranean diet was associated with a reduced risk of cancer incidence or mortality. Although the reviewed studies varied according to certain study characteristics, such as being set in different populations and studying different cancer outcomes, the existing evidence from observational studies collectively suggests that there is a “probable” protective role of the Mediterranean diet toward cancer in general. Specific results for several outcomes such as different cancer sites deserve additional evidence. This favorable effect of the Mediterranean diet on cancer reduction is of public health relevance, given the tendency of modern societies to shift toward a more U.S. and Northern European dietary pattern.
Dietary quality is an important factor in the etiology of breast cancer (BrCa), but further studies are required to better elucidate this relationship. Accordingly, we sought to analyze if diet ...quality, assessed using the Diet Quality Index-International (DQI-I), Mean Adequacy Ratio (MAR), and Dietary Energy Density (DED), was related to BrCa. In this Hospital-based case-control study, 253 patients with BrCa and 267 non BrCa controls were enrolled. Individual food consumption data from a food frequency questionnaire was used to calculate the Diet Quality Indices (DQI). Employing a case-control design, odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were obtained, and a dose-response analysis investigated. After adjusting for potential confounders, those in the highest quartile of the MAR index had significantly lower odds of BrCa than those in the lowest (OR = 0.42, 95% CI 0.23-0.78; P for trend = 0.007). Although there was no association between individual quartiles of the DQI-I and BrCa, there was evidence of a significant trend across all the quartile categories (P for trend = 0.030).There was no significant association was found between DED index and the odds of BrCa in the crude and fully adjusted models. We found that higher MAR indices were associated with decreased odds of BrCa, Therefore, the dietary patterns reflected by these scores may serve as a possible guide to preventing BrCa in Iranian women.
Abstract Objective Large-scale longitudinal data on the association of domain-specific physical activity (PA) and mortality is limited. Our objective was to evaluate the association of work, ...household (HPA), and leisure time PA (LTPA) with overall and cause-specific mortality in the EPIC-Spain study. Methods 38,379 participants (62.4% women), 30–65 years old, and free of chronic disease at baseline were followed-up from recruitment (1992 - 1996) to December 31st, 2008 to ascertain vital status and cause of death. PA was evaluated at baseline and at a 3-year follow-up with a validated questionnaire (EPIC-PAQ) and combined variables were used to classify the participants by sub-domains of PA. Associations with overall, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality risks were assessed using competing risk Cox regression models adjusted by potential confounders. Results After 13.6 years of mean follow-up, 1371 deaths were available for analyses. HPA was strongly associated to reduced overall (hazard ratio (HR) for Q4 vs. Q1 = 0.47 (0.34, 0.64)) and cause-specific mortalities in women and to lower cancer mortality in men ( P for trend = 0.004), irrespective of age, education, and lifestyle and morbidity variables. LTPA was associated with lower mortality in women (HR for Q4 vs. Q1 = 0.71 (0.52, 0.98)), but not men. No relationships were found between sedentariness at work and overall mortality. Conclusions HPA was associated to lower mortality risk in men and women from the EPIC-Spain cohort, whereas LTPA also contributed to reduce risk of death in women. Considering the large proportion of total daily PA that HPA represents in some population groups, these results are of public health importance.
Purpose
There is existing evidence on the potential role of chronic inflammation in the pathogenesis of pancreatic cancer (PC) and on how risk may be modulated by dietary factors. Pro-inflammatory ...diets are suggested to be associated with increased risk of PC but, so far, evidence remains not conclusive. We examined the association between the dietary inflammatory potential and PC risk within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, which includes 450,112 participants.
Methods
After a 14-year follow-up, a total of 1239 incident PC cases were included in this study. The inflammatory potential of the diet was estimated using an Inflammatory Score of the Diet (ISD). Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between the ISD and PC were estimated using multivariable Cox regression models, adjusted for known risk factors for PC.
Results
Participants with higher ISDs had a higher risk of developing PCs. In the fully adjusted multivariate model, the risk of PC increased by 11% (HR 1.11, 95% CI 1.02–1.22) for 1 point each standard deviation increase in the ISD score. Neither obesity nor any other known risk factor for PC showed statistically significant interactions.
Conclusion
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first prospective study reporting a positive relationship between the inflammatory potential of diet and PC. Since early diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer might be challenging, prevention remains the major hope for reducing the burden of this disease.
Objective To analyse the association between types of physical activity (occupational, recreational and household, vigorous and overall) and risk of primary oesophageal (OAC) or gastric ...adenocarcinoma (GAC). Methods From nine European countries, 420,449 participants were recruited between 1991 and 2000 and followed-up for a mean of 8.8 years to register incident GAC and OAC. Information on physical activity (PA), diet, lifestyle and health-related variables was obtained at baseline. Helicobacter pylori infection status was considered in a subset of 1,211 participants. Analyses were repeated by tumour site (cardia/non-cardia) and histological type (intestinal/diffuse). Results During the follow-up, 410 GAC and 80 OAC occurred. A lower risk of overall and non-cardia GAC was found for increasing levels of a PA index which combined occupational PA with weekly time spent in sports and cycling. The hazard ratio (HR) of GAC was 0.69, 95% CI: 0.50-0.94, for the comparison between active and inactive participants according to the PA index (HR = 0.44, 95% CI:0.26-0.74, for non-cardia GAC). No effect was found for cardia tumours or histological subtypes of GAC. PA of any kind was not associated with OAC. Conclusions Overall and distal (non-cardia) gastric tumours were inversely associated with time spent on cycling and sports and a total PA index. No association was found for any type of PA and risk of cardia cancers of the stomach.
Abstract Objective A cross-sectional study was conducted in the Spanish European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort to investigate the association among education ...level, as a measurement of socioeconomic position, gender, and dietary nutrient intake, focusing on plant sterols, in a Mediterranean population. Methods A sample of 25 615 women and 15 552 men (29–69 y old) from the Spanish EPIC cohort was recruited in 1992–1996. Nutrient and plant sterol intakes were estimated using a validated dietary history questionnaire and Spanish food composition tables. Results and conclusion Few differences in nutrient or plant sterol consumption existed between men and women with different education levels. Age and energy-adjusted linear regression models of plant sterol intake showed a small increase in subjects with lower education and higher consumption in men than in women. Homogeneity of healthy dietary habits across different socioeconomic groups in this population reflects a wide availability of characteristic Mediterranean foods at the time of recruitment. However, current changes in food supply and the increasing cost of healthy foods may lead to socioeconomic inequalities in Spain parallel to those taking place in other European populations.
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