Midlife Diet and Dementia Risk: A Negative Study

Midlife diet can influence cognitive health, but interventional studies on the effect of diet on dementia risk have been inconclusive, potentially due to follow-up times of <10 years. Researchers from the United Kingdom analyzed the association between midlife diet quality and dementia risk in people without histories of dementia between 1985–1988 using dietary assessments from 1991–1993 (n=8225), 1997–1999 (n=5242), and 2002–2004 (n=5534). The researchers extrapolated diet quality scores and dietary patterns (healthy and Western-type) from food frequency questionnaire information and identified dementia diagnoses from electronic health record linkage data.

Dementia was diagnosed in 344 participants during a median follow-up time of 25 years…