Veronese N, et al. - This study investigated the association between adherence to a Mediterranean diet and incidence of frailty in a large cohort of North American people. Over an 8-year follow-up period, researchers observed that even after adjusting for potential confounders, a higher adherence to a Mediterranean diet was associated with a lower incidence of frailty.

Methods

• Subjects at higher risk or having knee osteoarthritis were enrolled in this study.
• A validated Mediterranean diet score (aMED) as proposed by Panagiotakos was used to assess the adherence to the Mediterranean diet, which was then classified into five categories.
• Frailty was defined using the Study of Osteoporotic Fracture (SOF) index as the presence of ≥2 out of: (i) weight loss ≥5% between baseline and the subsequent follow-up visit; (ii) inability to do five chair stands; (iii) low energy level.

Results

• Findings demonstrated that, during the 8 years follow-up, of the 4,421 participants initially included (mean age: 61.2 years, % of females=58.0), the incidence of frailty was approximately half in those with a higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet (8 for 1,000 person years) vs. those with a lower adherence (15 for 1,000 persons-years).
• Researchers observed that after adjusting for 10 potential confounders (age, sex, race, body mass index, education, smoking habits, yearly income, physical activity level, Charlson co-morbidity index and daily energy intake), participants with the highest aMED scores had a significant attenuation in incident frailty (hazard ratio=0.71; 95% CIs: 0.50-0.99, p=0.047) with respect to those in a lower category.
• Data also reported that regarding individual components of the Mediterranean diet, low consumption of poultry was found to be associated with higher risk of frailty.