O2‐02‐04: MIND DIET SCORE MORE PREDICTIVE THAN DASH OR MEDITERRANEAN DIET SCORES

Project Description: The Mediterranean and DASH dietary patterns have been associated with slower rate of cognitive decline. The Mediterranean diet reflects a culturally-based diet pattern whereas the DASH diet was devised initially to reduce blood pressure. Neither diet is specific to current knowledge on neuroprotective foods and nutrients. We devised a new diet score, the MIND diet score, that more specifically captures consumption of the individual foods and nutrients that have been related to cognitive decline and incident dementia. The MIND diet includes many of the same dietary components as in the Mediterranean and DASH diets, such as emphasis on natural plant-based foods and limited animal and high saturated fat foods, but the MIND diet uniquely specifies berries and green leafy vegetables and food component servings that reflect diet-dementia study findings. The MIND diet score has a range of 0 to 15 (high quality). We tested its ability to predict cognitive decline among 915 participants of the Rush Memory and Aging Project who had two or more annual cognitive assessments over an average 4.8 years of follow-up (average age, 81 years; 75% women). We used mixed models to estimate the effect of diet score on the annual rate of decline in cognitive score. Computed MIND scores from food frequency data on MAP study participants averaged 7.1 (range: 2-12.5). The MIND diet score was positively correlated with both the Mediterranean diet score (r=0.63) and the DASH score (r=0.54). In a mixed model adjusted for age, sex, education, participation in cognitive activities and total energy intake, the MIND score was positively associated with slower rate of cognitive decline (β=0.009; SE=0.0023; p=.0002). We compared the diet scores for MIND, Mediterranean and DASH in their relative ability to predict cognitive decline among the MAP participants. The MIND diet score had the strongest association; standardized regression coefficients (β/standard error) of estimated effect were 3.91 for the MIND score, 2.78 for the Mediterranean diet score, and 2.83 for the DASH score. The MIND diet score may be a more predictive diet pattern of cognitive decline than either the Mediterranean or DASH diet scores.