title: Walnut consumption is associated with lower risk of type 2 diabetes in women.
abstract: Walnuts are rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids and have been shown to improve various cardiometabolic risk factors. We aimed to investigate the association between walnut intake and incident type 2 diabetes in 2 large cohort studies: the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and NHS II. We prospectively followed 58,063 women aged 52-77 y in NHS (1998-2008) and 79,893 women aged 35-52 y in NHS II (1999-2009) without diabetes, cardiovascular disease, or cancer at baseline. Consumption of walnuts and other nuts was assessed every 4 y using validated food frequency questionnaires. Self-reported type 2 diabetes was confirmed by a validated supplemental questionnaire. We documented a total of 5930 incident type 2 diabetes cases during 10 y of follow-up. In the multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards model without body mass index (BMI), walnut consumption was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, and the HRs (95% CIs) for participants consuming 1-3 servings/mo (1 serving = 28 g), 1 serving/wk, and ≥2 servings/wk of walnuts were 0.93 (0.88-0.99), 0.81 (0.70-0.94), and 0.67 (0.54-0.82) compared with women who never/rarely consumed walnuts (P-trend < 0.001). Further adjustment for updated BMI slightly attenuated the association and the HRs (95% CIs) were 0.96 (0.90-1.02), 0.87 (0.75-1.01), and 0.76 (0.62-0.94), respectively (P-trend = 0.002). The consumption of total nuts (P-trend < 0.001) and other tree nuts (P-trend = 0.03) was also inversely associated with risk of type 2 diabetes, and the associations were largely explained by BMI. Our results suggest that higher walnut consumption is associated with a significantly lower risk of type 2 diabetes in women.
authors: Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
authors: An
authors: A
authors: Pan
authors: Qi
authors: Q
authors: Sun
authors: JoAnn E
authors: JE
authors: Manson
authors: Walter C
authors: WC
authors: Willett
authors: Frank B
authors: FB
authors: Hu
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D015992:Body Mass Index; D015331:Cohort Studies; D003924:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D004032:Diet; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D031324:Juglans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009754:Nuts; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016387:Women's Health