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A Proposed Epidemiological Approach to Investigate Mechanisms between Diet and Vascular Function
Author(s) -
Maddock Jane,
Abmrosini Gina,
Koulman Albert,
Ray Sumantra
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.lb391
Subject(s) - disease , mediterranean diet , epidemiology , medicine , confounding , population , nutritional epidemiology , biology , environmental health , physiology , bioinformatics
Insights into associations between diet and Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) are constantly evolving due to methodological developments and identification of novel pathophysiological pathways. Nutritional epidemiology research often aims to examine the association between single nutrients/foods and CVD. More recently, dietary patterns (DPs) which incorporate cumulative and interactive effects of foods/nutrients, are studied in association with cardio metabolic disease risk. Hypothesis‐driven approaches to DP analysis are based on adherence to predefined diets (e.g. Mediterranean diet score) therefore, they may not reflect overall diet. While exploratory DP approaches (e.g. principal components analysis) can represent real‐world dietary behaviours, they may not fully explain the disease‐relevant variation in dietary intake. Reduced rank regression (RRR) takes advantage of both prior knowledge and data‐driven aspects by incorporating hypothesised intermediates on the diet‐disease pathway when identifying DPs. The aim of this study is to apply RRR to investigate a pathway between diet and early vascular dysfunction markers, which have been associated with CVD risk (see figure for study approach).We are using RRR to identify dietary patterns associated with homocysteine and biomarkers of oxidative stress which are both hypothesised to influence early vascular function markers. The second phase of the study will investigate the prospective associations between RRR‐defined DPs and vascular function. This approach may provide a useful model to study diet and CVD mechanisms in population studies.