Intake of flavonoids and risk of dementia.
It has been postulated that oxidative stress may play a key role in dementia. This is substantiated by the recent discovery of the protective effect of wine. In wine, the flavonoids--powerful antioxidant substances also contained in tea, fruits and vegetables--have been thought to offer such protection. We investigated whether flavonoid intake could be associated with a lower incidence of dementia in a cohort of 1367 subjects above 65 years of age (Paquid). A questionnaire was used to evaluate their intake of flavonoids and subjects were followed-up for 5 years between 1991 and 1996: 66 incident cases of dementia were observed. We estimated the relative risk (RR) of dementia according to tertiles of flavonoid intake using a Cox model. The age-adjusted RR of dementia was 0.55 for the two highest tertiles compared to the lowest (95% CI: 0.34-0.90; p = 0.02). After additional adjustment for gender, education, weight and vitamin C intake, the RR was 0.49 (95% CI: 0.26-0.92; p = 0.04). We conclude that the intake of antioxidant flavonoids is inversely related to the risk of incident dementia.
Commenges
D
D
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U330, Bordeaux, France. daniel.commenges@bordeaux.inserm.fr
Scotet
V
V
Renaud
S
S
Jacqmin-Gadda
H
H
Barberger-Gateau
P
P
Dartigues
J F
JF
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003704:Dementia / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control; D004032:Diet; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D005419:Flavonoids / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005602:France / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D018384:Oxidative Stress; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D018570:Risk Assessment
D005419:Flavonoids