Diets higher in inflammatory foods were tied to an increased incidence of dementia in older adults, longitudinal data from the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort showed.
Over 13 years of follow-up, higher Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) scores averaged across three time points were linearly associated with an increased incidence of all-cause dementia (HR 1.21, 95% CI 1.10-1.33, P<0.001), reported Debora Melo van Lent, PhD, of UT Health San Antonio in Texas, and co-authors.
Similarly, higher DII scores were linearly associated with an increase in Alzheimer’s disease dementia (HR 1.20, 95% CI 1.07-1.34, P=0.002), the researchers reported in Alzheimer’s & Dementia. Findings were adjusted for demographic, lifestyle, and clinical covariates.
“Although these promising findings need to be replicated and further validated, our results suggest that diets that correlate with low DII scores may prevent late-life dementia,” van Lent and colleagues noted.
Previous cross-sectional research from the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort showed that higher DII scores — indicating more pro-inflammatory foods consumed — correlated with smaller total brain and gray matter volumes and larger lateral ventricular volume.
Other cohort studies, including a 3-year study in Greece, tied diets with high inflammatory potential to an increased risk of incident dementia. And clinical trial data showed the MIND diet — a hybrid of the Mediterranean diet and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet that is rich in anti-inflammatory foods — had a similar effect on cognition and brain MRI outcomes as mild caloric restriction over 3 years, possibly due to high adherence of the control group to lifestyle advice.
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