Adherence to the Australian dietary guidelines and development of depressive symptoms at 5 years follow-up amongst women in the READI cohort study

Opie et al. (2020) drew data from the READI longitudinal study of socioeconomically disadvantaged Australian women to investigate the relationship between adherence to the Australian dietary guidelines and depressive symptoms. The risk of developing depressive symptoms was determined by the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D)) which was conducted at a 5-year follow-up on the 837 women included in the study. The study found an association between baseline diet quality (assessed using the Dietary Guideline Index [DGI-2013; score range 0 to 85) and depression, where a 10 unit increase in DGI-2013 score was associated with an estimated 12% reduction in risk of developing heightened depressive symptoms (RR = 0.875, p = 0.018). In addition, the fixed-effects model indicated that an increase in DGI score over 5 years follow-up was associated with a lower (improved) CES-D score. The results indicate that greater adherence to the Australian Dietary Guidelines may improve symptoms of depression, providing further support for dietary behavior change programs. [NPID: Australia, women, depression, diet quality, dietary behavior change programs]

Year: 2020

Reference: Opie, R. S., Ball, K., Abbott, G., Crawford, D., Teychenne, M., & McNaughton, S. A. (2020). Adherence to the Australian dietary guidelines and development of depressive symptoms at 5 years follow-up amongst women in the READI cohort study. Nutrition journal, 19(1), 30. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12937-020-00540-0