(P22-058-24) Association Between Plant-Based Dietary Patterns and Long-Term Risk of Dementia

Objectives: Plant-based diets have been increasingly recommended for their health benefits. However, there has been a lack of evidence regarding their associations with dementia. This study aimed to evaluate the associations between plant-based dietary patterns and the risk of dementia in 3 prospective studies.

Methods: We included 6642 participants in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), 3045 participants in the Framingham Heart Study Offspring cohort (FOS), and 8219 participants in the Whitehall II study (WHII) who were≥ 45y and without dementia at the study baseline. The overall plant-based diet index (PDI), healthful plant-based diet index (hPDI) and unhealthful plant- based diet index (uPDI) were calculated from food frequency questionnaires. Cox proportional hazard models were used to assess the association of PDIs and their components with incident all-cause dementia.

Results: During a total of 166,762 person-years of follow-up, 891 participants (430 in HRS, 242 in FOS, 219 in WHII) developed incident dementia. In the multivariable-adjusted models, participants with higher PDI and hPDI were at lower risks of all-cause dementia (pooled Hazard Ratio [HR]_{Tertile3 vs. Tertile1} = 0.69, 95% confident interval [CI], 0.52, 0.91 for PDI and pooled HR_T3vsT1 = 0.76, 95% CI, 0.60, 0.97 for hPDI). Conversely, participants with the highest uPDI had a 46% higher risk of dementia (pooled HR_{Tertile3 vs. Tertile1} = 1.46, 95% CI, 1.22, 1.75). In addition, higher consumption of all healthful plant-based foods was associated with lower risk of dementia (pooled HR_{Tertile3 vs. Tertile1} = 0.55, 95% CI, 0.46, 0.66). These associations were consistent in most subgroups defined by sex, age, smoking, and body mass index.

Conclusions: Adherence to the overall and healthful plant-based dietary patterns was associated with lower risk of incident dementia in middle-aged and older adults. These findings support the recommendations to shift to diet rich in healthy plant-based foods, and low in unhealthy plant-based foods and animal foods.

Funding Sources: None