ASSOCIATION BETWEEN A HEALTHY DIET ACCORDING TO WHO GUIDELINES AND ALL-CAUSE MORTALITY IN EUROPEAN AND AMERICAN ELDERLY, THE CHANCES PROJECT

Background and objectives: The Healthy Diet Indicator(HDI) measures adherence to the WHO guidelines for preventingdiet related chronic diseases, and can be applied to assessassociations of diet with health across populations. We examinedthe association between the HDI and all-cause mortalityin European and American elderly people aged 60 years andabove.Methods: We analysed data on 395,863 men and womenfrom 11 prospective cohort studies from the Consortium onHealth and Ageing: Network of Cohorts In Europe And TheUnited States (CHANCES). Across cohorts, the follow-upperiods ranged from 10 to 20 yrs. Diet was assessed throughvalidated methods. For the translation of foods to nutrients,country specific food composition tables were used. The continuouslyscored HDI (range mean and SD HDI score 45±9to 54±7 across cohorts) was based on intakes of saturated andpolyunsaturated fatty acids, mono-and disaccharides, protein,cholesterol, dietary fibre and fruits and vegetables. The associationbetween the HDI and all-cause mortality was evaluated ineach cohort separately, by multiple Cox proportional hazardsregression. A pooled hazard ratio (HR) was subsequently estimatedusing a random-effects model.Results: Across all cohorts, 84,863 people died during4,492,298 person-years of follow-up. Adjusted HR of death, fora 10 point increment in HDI score, ranged between 0.81 (95%CI 0.77-0.86) in Denmark and 0.99 (95% CI, 0.84-1.16) in Poland.The pooled adjusted HR estimate showed a significantinverse association of 0.90 (95% CI 0.87-0.93) but there was asignificant heterogeneity between studies (p=0.001, I2=66%).Conclusion: Our results show that higher dietary quality isinversely associated with all- cause mortality but