BACKGROUND: Frailty is a common geriatric syndrome in old people. It remains controversial whether Mediterranean diet could prevent old people from developing into frailty. The aim of this study is to summarize the relevant studies and assess the effectiveness of adherence to Mediterranean diet on frailty in old people.
METHOD: A systematic search of MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials was conducted to identify all relevant studies up to Oct 2017. We included studies regarding the associations between adherence to Mediterranean diet and risk of frailty among elders. A meta-analysis was performed to explore the effects of Mediterranean diet on frailty.
RESULTS: Six studies matched the inclusion criteria, of which five were prospective and one was cross-sectional. A total of 10,210 participants from the five prospective cohort studies were included to perform the meta-analyses. In comparison with lowest adherence to Mediterranean diet, elders with highest adherence to Mediterranean diet were significantly associated with lower risk of frailty in the future (RR= 0.56, 95% CI=0.36-0.89, p=0.015). Furthermore, the pooled estimates from four studies performed among participants in western countries (European and North American) showed that higher adherence to Mediterranean diet was associated with a 52% reduced risk of frailty (RR= 0.48, 95% CI=0.32-0.72, p<0.001). However, one study showed no association between Mediterranean diet and frailty among Asian elders (RR=1.06, 95% CI=0.83-1.36, p=0.638).
CONCLUSION: A higher adherence to Mediterranean diet is associated with a lower risk of frailty in old people. Meanwhile, the benefits may be more obvious among elders from western countries.
A previous meta-analysis provided convincing evidence for an inverse association between adherence to a Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) and the risk of all-cause mortality. Since then, 19 prospective studies have been published. We updated the evidence from these prospective studies and conducted a dose-response meta-analysis to test the linear and potential nonlinear dose-response associations between adherence to a MedDiet and the risk of all-cause mortality.
The PubMed, Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge, and Embase bibliographic databases were systematically searched up to August 24, 2018. Summary HRs were estimated with the use of a random-effects meta-analysis to assess the association between a 2-point increment in MedDiet adherence and the risk of all-cause mortality. Sensitivity and subgroup analyses were performed and potential publication bias was tested. Twenty-nine prospective studies with 1,676,901 participants and 221,603 cases of all-cause mortality were included in the final analysis.
The pooled HR of all-cause mortality was 0.90 (95% CI: 0.89, 0.91; I2 = 81.1%) for a 2-point increment in adherence to a MedDiet. Subgroup analyses showed that a significant inverse association was stronger in participants who lived in the Mediterranean region compared with non-Mediterranean areas (HRs: 0.82 compared with 0.92, respectively), and in studies that used the Panagiotakos MedDiet score.
A nonlinear dose-response meta-analysis indicated that the risk of all-cause mortality linearly decreased with the increase in adherence to a MedDiet. The robustness of findings was confirmed in the sensitivity analyses. In conclusion, low-quality evidence from prospective cohort studies suggests an inverse association between adherence to a MedDiet and the risk of all-cause mortality, especially in Mediterranean regions. An inverse linear dose-response relation was also observed between adherence to a MedDiet and the risk of all-cause mortality.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk increases with age and lacks efficacious pharmacological options. Summaries of the existing evidence reveal an association between Mediterranean-style diet adherence and reduced AD incidence; however, no review has investigated this relationship with respect to the hallmark AD biomarkers (tau and beta-amyloid) that manifest decades before clinical symptomatology. MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, and SCOPUS databases were systematically searched to identify peer-reviewed articles investigating diet and AD biomarkers in the last 2 decades.
Two thousand seven hundred twenty-six records were extracted, quality assessed, and double-blind screened by 2 authors. Fifteen studies met the inclusion criteria and 13 studies found a significant relationship. Of these, 4 studies found a high-glycemic load was related to an increase in AD biomarker burden; 6 found adherence to a Mediterranean or "AD-protective" dietary pattern conferred a reduction in AD biomarker burden. Meta-analysis revealed a small but significant effect of diet on AD biomarkers (β = 0.11 [95% CI 0.04-0.17], p = 0.002). This systematic review supports the notion that diet and nutrition display potential for nonpharmacological AD prevention.
No abstract available.
You can read the full article here.