• Dietary Patterns and Fractures in Postmenopausal Women: Results From the Women's Health Initiative

      Haring, Bernhard; Crandall, Carolyn J.; Wu, Chunyuan; LeBlanc, Erin S.; Shikany, James M.; Carbone, Laura; Orchard, Tonya; Thomas, Fridtjof; Wactawski-Wende, Jean; Li, Wenjun; et al. (2016-05-01)
      IMPORTANCE: Considerable efforts have been undertaken to relate single nutrients to bone health. To this point, results are inconsistent. Suboptimal single nutrient intake does not occur in isolation but rather reflects a poor diet quality. OBJECTIVE: To assess the association between adherence to a diet quality index constructed on the basis of dietary recommendations or existing healthy dietary patterns and fractures in postmenopausal women. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Post hoc analysis was conducted of longitudinal data from 40 clinical centers throughout the United States included in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) observational study. Participants in the prospective cohort included 93676 women who were eligible for the WHI if they were aged 50 to 79 years. Recruitment was conducted from October 1, 1993, to December 31, 1998, with the study ending August 29, 2014. The WHI food frequency questionnaire was used to derive nutrient and food intake at baseline. Diet quality and adherence were assessed by scores on the alternate Mediterranean Diet (aMED), a 9-category measure of adherence to a Mediterranean dietary pattern; the Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI-2010), a 100-point measure of 12 food components; the 11-item Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010); or the 8-component Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet score. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Outcome measures included incident total and hip fractures. Hazard ratios (HRs) by quintiles of dietary index scores were estimated using Cox proportional hazards regression analyses. RESULTS: Of the 93676 participants, 90014 were included in the analysis (mean [SD] age, 63.6 [7.4]) years. During a median follow-up time of 15.9 years, there were 2121 cases of hip fractures and 28718 cases of total fractures. Women scoring in the highest quintile (Q5) of the aMED index had a lower risk for hip fractures (HR, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.66-0.97), with an absolute risk reduction of 0.29% and a number needed to treat of 342 (95% CI, 249-502). No association between the aMED score and total fractures was observed (Q5 HR, 1.01; 95% CI, 0.95-1.07). Higher HEI-2010 or DASH scores tended to be inversely related to hip fracture risk, but the results were nonsignificant (Q5 HR, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.75-1.02; and Q5 HR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.75-1.06, respectively). The AHEI-2010 score was associated with neither hip nor total fractures. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Higher adherence to a Mediterranean diet is associated with a lower risk for hip fractures. These results support that a healthy dietary pattern may play a role in maintaining bone health in postmenopausal women.
    • Proteins as Mediators of the Association Between Diet Quality and Incident Cardiovascular Disease and All-Cause Mortality: The Framingham Heart Study

      Kim, Youjin; Lu, Sophia; Ho, Jennifer E.; Hwang, Shih-Jen; Yao, Chen; Huan, Tianxiao; Levy, Daniel; Ma, Jiantao (2021-09-06)
      Background Biological mechanisms underlying the association of a healthy diet with chronic diseases remain unclear. Targeted proteomics may facilitate the understanding of mechanisms linking diet to chronic diseases. Methods and Results We examined 6360 participants (mean age 50 years; 54% women) in the Framingham Heart Study. The associations between diet and 71 cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related proteins were examined using 3 diet quality scores: the Alternate Healthy Eating Index, the modified Mediterranean-style Diet Score, and the modified Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet score. A mediation analysis was conducted to examine which proteins mediated the associations of diet with incident CVD and all-cause mortality. Thirty of the 71 proteins were associated with at least 1 diet quality score (P < 0.0007) after adjustment for multiple covariates in all study participants and confirmed by an internal validation analysis. Gene ontology analysis identified inflammation-related pathways such as regulation of cell killing and neuroinflammatory response (Bonferroni corrected P < 0.05). During a median follow-up of 13 years, we documented 512 deaths and 488 incident CVD events. Higher diet quality scores were associated with lower risk of CVD (P < /=0.03) and mortality (P < /=0.004). After adjusting for multiple potential confounders, 4 proteins (B2M [beta-2-microglobulin], GDF15 [growth differentiation factor 15], sICAM1 [soluble intercellular adhesion molecule 1], and UCMGP [uncarboxylated matrix Gla-protein]) mediated the association between at least 1 diet quality score and all-cause mortality (median proportion of mediation ranged from 8.6% to 25.9%). We also observed that GDF15 mediated the association of the Alternate Healthy Eating Index with CVD (median proportion of mediation: 8.6%). Conclusions Diet quality is associated with new-onset CVD and mortality and with circulating CVD-related proteins. Several proteins appear to mediate the association of diet with these outcomes.
    • Racial Differences in Misclassification of Healthy Eating Based on Food Frequency Questionnaire and 24-Hour Dietary Recalls

      Olendzki, Barbara C; Procter-Gray, Elizabeth; Magee, M. F.; Youssef, Gretchen A.; Kane, Kevin J.; Churchill, Linda C.; Ockene, Judith K.; Li, Wenjun (2017-07-01)
      Objectives: To examine the agreement in nutrient intake and alternate healthy eating indices (AHEI) between a self-administered Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and 24-hour recall (24HR) measurements of diet by race, among urban older women. Design: Cross-sectional observational study Setting: Urban neighborhoods in Washington, DC, USA. Participants: Community-dwelling White and Black women aged 65 and older. Measurements: In 2014 and 2015, 49 White and 44 Black older women were queried on diet using both FFQ and 24-hour recalls. The correlation coefficients of 55 nutrient intake measures and agreements on healthy eating classification between the two instruments were compared overall and by race. Results: The mean correlation coefficient (rho) was 0.46 for Whites and 0.23 for Blacks. For 47 measures, rho was lower for Blacks. Whites had a strong correlation of ≥0.5 for 28 items, while Blacks had strong correlations for only 3 items. Based on FFQ, the mean (SD) of AHEI were 54.0 (10.3) for Whites and 45.9 (8.8) for Blacks (P< 0.001). Based on 24HR, the mean (SD) were 43.9 (10.8) for Whites and 33.2 (9.6) for Blacks (P< 0.001). Using 32 as the cutoff (40% of maximum AHEI score), 50% of Blacks and 14% of Whites were classified as eating unhealthy based on the 24HR, versus 2.6% and 0% based on the FFQ. Conclusion: The FFQ has limited ability to accurately assess nutrient intake among older Black women, and tends to underestimate racial differences in healthy eating. The FFQ should be further improved for use in racial disparities research of healthy eating in older age, using a larger sample of older women with racial and geographic diversities.
    • A review of harmonization methods for studying dietary patterns

      Gurugubelli, Venkata Sukumar; Fang, Hua; Shikany, James M; Balkus, Salvador V; Rumbut, Joshua; Ngo, Hieu; Wang, Honggang; Allison, Jeroan J; Steffen, Lyn M (2022-01-13)
      Data harmonization is the process by which each of the variables from different research studies are standardized to similar units resulting in comparable datasets. These data may be integrated for more powerful and accurate examination and prediction of outcomes for use in the intelligent and smart electronic health software programs and systems. Prospective harmonization is performed when researchers create guidelines for gathering and managing the data before data collection begins. In contrast, retrospective harmonization is performed by pooling previously collected data from various studies using expert domain knowledge to identify and translate variables. In nutritional epidemiology, dietary data harmonization is often necessary to construct the nutrient and food databases necessary to answer complex research questions and develop effective public health policy. In this paper, we review methods for effective data harmonization, including developing a harmonization plan, which common standards already exist for harmonization, and defining variables needed to harmonize datasets. Currently, several large-scale studies maintain harmonized nutrient databases, especially in Europe, and steps have been proposed to inform the retrospective harmonization process. As an example, data harmonization methods are applied to several U.S longitudinal diet datasets. Based on our review, considerations for future dietary data harmonization include user agreements for sharing private data among participating studies, defining variables and data dictionaries that accurately map variables among studies, and the use of secure data storage servers to maintain privacy. These considerations establish necessary components of harmonized data for smart health applications which can promote healthier eating and provide greater insights into the effect of dietary patterns on health.