Dietary patterns and cardiovascular disease in Australian adults: Findings from the 2011-12 Australian Health Survey
Martin M.H. Wong May 7, 2020 Volume 30, Issue 5, Pages 738–748
Highlights
•Past results on the association between CVD and dietary patterns were inconsistent.
•We examined 4 a priori dietary patterns in a representative sample of Australians.
•We used a uniformed statistical approach for better between-patterns comparison.
•Only the Okinawan dietary pattern was found to be related to a reduced prevalence of IHD.
Background and aims
Great discrepancies exist in results from studies examining the association between dietary patterns and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in different populations. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the Australian Dietary Guidelines (ADG) 2013, Mediterranean-DASH diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND), Paleolithic and Okinawan dietary patterns and CVD respectively.
Methods and results
In this cross-sectional secondary analysis of the 2011-12 Australian Health Survey, adults who self-reported physician-diagnosed CVD, completed two multiple-pass 24 h recalls and had no missing data on all confounders were analysed (weighted n = 5376; 295 CVD cases). Dietary intake was transformed to represent usual intake by the multiple source method. The score of Healthy Eating Index for Australian Adults (HEIFA-2013) was adopted for ADG 2013, while the scores of MIND, Paleolithic and Okinawan dietary patterns were constructed by separating the intake of each predefined food and nutrient into quintiles. The associations between the dietary patterns (as tertiles of scores) and CVD were examined using binary logistic regression adjusted for significant cardiovascular risk factors. Higher adherence to the Okinawan diet pattern was significantly associated with a reduced prevalence of ischemic heart disease (IHD) (OR per unit increase in dietary pattern score: 0.94, 95%CI: 0.90–0.98). Comparing its extreme tertiles, the OR was 0.49 (95%CI: 0.29–0.82; ptrend < 0.01). The associations between HEIFA-2013, MIND and Paleolithic diet patterns and CVD were insignificant.
Conclusion
The findings suggested an inverse association between adherence to Okinawan dietary pattern and prevalence of IHD in Australian adults.