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Mediterranean diet linked to beneficial effects on aging in women
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In a new study, greater adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with longer telomere length, a biomarker of aging, in women.
“To our knowledge, this is the largest population-based study specifically addressing the association between Mediterranean diet adherence and telomere length in healthy, middle-aged women,” Immaculata De Vivo, PhD, MPH, associate professor in the department of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the department of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues wrote. “Our results further support the benefits of adherence to the Mediterranean diet for promoting health and longevity.”
De Vivo and colleagues analyzed data from 4,676 healthy women from nested case-control studies within the Nurses’ Health Study who completed food frequency questionnaires. They examined the association between relative telomere length in peripheral blood leukocytes as measured by polymerase chain reaction and the Alternative Mediterranean Diet score, which was calculated from self-reported dietary data. The score ranged from 0 to 9, with 9 most closely resembling the Mediterranean diet.
Stricter adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with longer telomere length after the researchers adjusted for potential confounders. The least squares mean telomere length z scores were –0.038 (standard error, 0.035) for women with an Alternative Mediterranean Diet score of ≤2, compared with 0.072 (standard error, 0.03) for those with a score of ≥6 (P=.004). However, the researchers identified no link between telomere length and any of the individual dietary components.
The difference in telomere length for each 1-point change in the Alternative Mediterranean Diet corresponded to an average of 1.5 years of aging. Further, the researchers reported that a 3-point change would correspond to an average of 4.5 years of aging, similar to the difference in smokers vs. nonsmokers (4.6 years) and highly active vs. less-active women (4.4 years).
In a related editorial, Peter M. Nilsson, MD, PhD, from Lund University, department of clinical sciences, Skåne University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden, wrote that “a Mediterranean diet is the cornerstone of dietary advice in [CVD] prevention, and that fact that it also links with a biomarker of slower aging is reassuring. Ideally, we need similar data in men, but also analyses on prediction of coronary events in relation to telomere length among these nurses.”
He noted that “genetic background factors, reflecting ancestry, could probably explain some of the variation in the association between dietary patterns and telomere length, and future studies on this question should take into account the possibility of interactions between genes, diet and sex.”
For more information:
Crous-Bou M. BMJ. 2014;doi:10.1136/bmj.g6674.
Nilsson PM. BMJ. 2014;doi:10.1136/bmj.g6843.
Disclosure: The study was funded by the NIH. The researchers and Nilsson report no relevant financial disclosures.