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Mediterranean diet, food consumption and risk of late-life depression: The Mugello Study
Pagliai et al. (2018) investigated dietary habits, including adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD) and their relationship with the risk of depression, using data from the Mugello study, an epidemiological study that analysed a total of 388 subjects aged 90-99 living in the homes and nursing homes in Florence, Italy. The Mugello study examined various health issues including those related to nutritional status, which enabled the extraction of dietary data, while a shorter version of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) was used to detect the possible presence of depressive symptoms, and cognitive and functional status were assessed using the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Clock Drawing Test, as well as the Basic and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living test. Pagliai et al. (2018) found that depressed subjects were more likely to be older, female, or widows, than those not depressed. The depressed participants were also less adherent to the MD (no statistical significance) than non-depressed subjects (NDS). A lower risk of depression was related to greater consumption of olive oil and fruit, with odds ratios of 0.35 and 0.46 respectively (after adjustment for many possible confounders). As for sex, similar results were observed for women, while no statistically significant differences emerged for men. To conclude, this study’s results implicated diets enriched in olive oil and fruit to protect against the development of depressive symptoms in older age. [NPIDs: aging, elderly, cognitive decline, neurodegenerative disorders, dementia, cognition, Mediterranean diet, depression, olive oil]
Year: 2018
