Dementia Mortality Tied to Olive Oil Consumption

Higher olive oil intake was associated with a lower risk of dementia-related mortality, a prospective study of 90,000 healthcare professionals showed.

Eating at least 7 g of olive oil daily — about a half tablespoon — was tied to an adjusted 28% lower risk of dementia-related death (pooled hazard ratio [HR] 0.72, 95% CI 0.64-0.81) compared with never or rarely consuming olive oil (P for trend <0.001) over 28 years of follow-up, reported Anne-Julie Tessier, RD, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and co-authors.

The researchers followed 60,582 women from the Nurses’ Health Study and 31,801 men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study from 1990 to 2018. Previous research from these cohorts showed that higher olive oil consumption was tied to lower cardiovascular disease risk and lower neurodegenerative disease mortality.

Olive oil consumption may lower dementia mortality by improving vascular health, Tessier and colleagues suggested, though incident cardiovascular disease, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, and diabetes were not significant mediators of the relationship between olive oil and dementia-related death in this study.

Source: Medpage Today©