Background: Diet and lifestyle are important factors in improving cardiovascular health and preventing chronic diseases.
Objectives: Assessment of changes brought about in cardiovascular risk (CVR) and metabolic syndrome (MS) after inclusion in a nutritional program.
Materials and methods: Intervention, nonrandomized prospective cohort study carried out at Huelva prison in a one year period. Information about quarterly and bi-annual anthropometric and blood biochemical variables was obtained to assess changes in diet. A descriptive analysis with LC 95% and pre-post study was also completed, using T-Student quantitative variables and Wilcoxon test averages. Qualitative testing was performed using the Chi-square test.
Results: The sample consisted of 139 subjects, 44 patients were lost in the follow-up study and 95 completed the program. Diet modification took place in 86.3% of the cases. We obtained significant improvements in weight, body mass, fat mass, abdominal perimeter and diastolic blood pressure rate index variables (Table 3). We see a reduction in high and low CVR vs. medium CVR according to features of Framingham and REGICOR (without significance), remaining stable in the SCORE model (Table 4).
Conclusions: Health education and proper diet improved anthropometric and biochemical parameters in these patients. This may imply a new tool in the health care repertoire that can be applied to other centres.