Association of adherence to the EAT-Lancet diet with risk of dementia according to social economic status: a prospective cohort in UK Biobank

• DOI: 10.1007/s11357-024-01333-7
• Publication Date: 2024-09-12T15:04:00Z
• Authors: Wanying Zhao; Qian Chen; Qi Zhang; Siqi Li; Jiaqi Zhao; Wanlan Chen; Jialu Yang; Min Xia; Yan Liu
• Keywords: Association (psychology)

The EAT-Lancet Commission has proposed a reference diet aiming to promote human health and environmental sustainability. Socioeconomic disadvantage and poor diet are well-known risk factors for dementia; however, whether the effect of this reference diet on dementia varies by socioeconomic status has not been investigated. The dietary habits of 190,893 participants from UK-Biobank were assessed; the association of EAT-Lancet diet with incident dementia across socioeconomic status was determined by Cox models. One thousand seven hundred twenty-eight dementia cases were identified during a median of 12.24 years follow-up. An inverse association between adherence to EAT-Lancet diet and all-cause dementia (high vs. low; hazard ratio [HR], 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.82, 0.72-0.94) or late-onset dementia (high vs. low; HR, 95% CI: 0.78, 0.68-0.91) was observed only in individuals with high socioeconomic status. On the contrary, no protective effects of EAT-Lancet diet on early-onset dementia were observed, regardless of the socioeconomic status. Our findings indicated that adherence to an environment-friendly diet helps attenuate risk of dementia only in individuals with high socioeconomic level.