The association of Mediterranean diet with lower risk of acute coronary syndromes in hypertensive subjects.
BACKGROUND
The elevation of blood pressure levels has been recognised as a determinant of the risk for several common cardiovascular diseases. In this work we examined the effect of Mediterranean type of diet on coronary risk in subjects with hypertension.


METHODS
CARDIO2000 consisted of 848 randomly selected hospitalised patients (695 males, 58 +/- 10 years old; 153 females, 65 +/- 9 years old) for first event of coronary heart disease (CHD) and 1078 paired, by sex-age, hospitalised controls without CHD. The adoption of the Mediterranean diet was assessed through a validated questionnaire developed by the National School of Public Health.


RESULTS
418 (49%) of the patients and 303 (28%) of the controls were hypertensive. Of them 21 (5%) patients and 36 (12%) controls were unaware of their condition, 94 (22%) and 34 (11%) were untreated, 148 (35%) and 111 (36%) were uncontrolled and 155 (38%) and 122 (41%) were controlled (P<0.01). One hundred and sixty-two (19%) of the patients and 265 (25%) of the controls (P<0.01) adopted the Mediterranean type of diet. Our results suggest that the adoption of Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of developing acute coronary syndromes by 17% (odds ratio=0.83, 95% CI 0.73--0.88, P<0.01) in controlled hypertensive subjects, by 8% (odds ratio=0.92, 95% CI 0.87-0.95, P<0.05) in unaware, by 7% (odds ratio=0.93, 95% CI 0.88-0.95, P<0.05) in acknowledged but uncontrolled and by 20% (odds ratio=0.80, 95% CI 0.71-0.89, P<0.01) in normotensive subjects.


CONCLUSIONS
According to our findings the adoption of the Mediterranean diet is associated with the reduction of coronary risk in hypertensive subjects.
Panagiotakos
Demosthenes B
DB
Cardiology Department, School of Medicine, University of Athens, Athens, Greece. d.b.panagiotakos@usa.net
Chrysohoou
Christine
C
Pitsavos
Christos
C
Tzioumis
Kostas
K
Papaioannou
Ioanna
I
Stefanadis
Christodoulos
C
Toutouzas
Pavlos
P
D000208:Acute Disease; D000368:Aged; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology*; D004032:Diet; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000150:complications*; D008297:Male; D019083:Mediterranean Region; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D013577:Syndrome