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Adherence to healthy dietary guidelines and future depressive symptoms: Evidence for sex differentials in the Whitehall II study
Adherence to healthy diet may lead to reduced risk of developing depressive symptoms
Akbaraly et al. (2013) examined 4,215 participants from the Whitehall II Study on dietary patterns (using the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI)) and display of depressive symptoms at follow-up. The present study aimed to test the theory that adherence to a healthy diet may lead to reduced risk of developing depressive symptoms. In cases where a participant scored 16 or more on the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, or self-reported antidepressant use, the participants was defined as having recurrent depressive symptoms. The results showed that women who maintained high AHEI scores or improved their diet scores benefitted from a 65% and 68% (respectively) reduction in risk of developing recurrent depressive signs later on, compared to those with consistently low AHEI scores. The inverse association between AHEI scores and recurrent depressive symptoms was only observed in the female population (OR=0.59; 95% CI 0.47-0.75, p<0.001). While examining AHEI components, it was found that vegetables, fruits, trans fats, and the ratio of polyunsaturated fat to saturated fat components correlated with recurrent depressive symptoms in women. Poor diet is suggested to be a risk factor for future depression in women, which may spark a new aim for a public health campaigns targeting women’s depression. [NPID: depression, females, fruit, vegetables, trans fat, polyunsaturated fat, saturated fat, public health]
Year: 2013
