Mediterranean Diet Cuts Genetic Risk of Stroke
Your genes play a role in the development of risk factors that can lead to a stroke, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and vascular problems. But even though these are all hardwired in your DNA, it is still possible to prevent the onset of stroke – by following the Greek diet, a large study suggests.
Researchers from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Centre on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University and from the CIBER Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutriciόn in Spain, were the first to identify a gene-diet interaction affecting stroke in a nutrition intervention randomised, controlled trial that lasted for several years and involved thousands of people.
For the study, 7,000 men and women were randomly assigned to either a Mediterranean or low fat diet and were monitored for almost 5 years, tracking the occurrence of cardiovascular disease, stroke and heart attack. The researchers focused on the gene variant of Transcription Factor 7-Like 2 which has been linked to an increased risk of diabetes (it’s association with heart disease is still unclear). Nearly 14 per cent of the participants were homozygous carriers – meaning, they carried two copies of the gene variant and had an increased risk of the disease.
Greek Diet Cuts Risk of Stroke
The researchers found that being on the Mediterranean diet (which was made largely of olive oil, fish, complex carbohydrates and nuts), reduced the number of strokes in the homozygous carriers. According to José M. Ordovás, Ph.D., director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA at Tufts University, “the food they ate appeared to eliminate any increased stroke susceptibility, putting put them on an even playing field with people with one or no copies of the variant”. On the other hand, homozygous carriers who followed a low-fat diet were almost three times as likely to have a stroke as those with one or no copy of the gene variant.
Furthermore, people who carried two copies of the gene variant but strictly adhered to the Mediterranean diet had lower risk of total blood cholesterol, low density lipoprotein and triglycerides – common measures of cardiovascular disease.
“With the ability to analyze the relationship between diet, genetics and life-threatening cardiac events, we can begin to think seriously about developing genetic tests to identify people who may reduce their risk for chronic disease, or even prevent it, by making meaningful changes to the way they eat." Ordovás said.
Their findings were published in the journal Diabetes Care.
Source of this article:
A randomized controlled trial in a high-cardiovascular-risk population
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