Background: Previous studies assessing the role of dietary factors in depression have mainly focused on nutrients, while the association between dietary patterns and depression is less studied.
Objective: The aim was to assess the role of dietary patterns in depression in both cross-sectional and prospective analyses.
Design: The study population consisted of 1003 Finnish middle-aged or older men from the Kuopio Ischemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study. Food consumption was assessed by food frequency questionnaire in 1991-1993 and dietary patterns from 25 predefined food groups were extracted by factor analysis. Depressive symptoms were assessed with the self-administered Human Population Laboratory Depression Scale, cut-off point of five or more indicating elevated depressive symptoms.
Results: Altogether 72 (7.2%) subjects had elevated depressive symptoms. Three dietary patterns were identified: "prudent", "Western" and "mixed". In cross-sectional analysis, after adjustments for age, examination year, BMI, smoking, alcohol consumption, education, marital status, leisure-time physical activity, history of mental illness and cardiovascular disease the prudent dietary pattern was associated with a 25% lower prevalence of elevated depressive symptoms (OR: 0.75; 95% CI: 0.57, 0.99; P=0.036), whereas the Western dietary pattern was associated with increased prevalence of elevated depressive symptoms (OR: 1.41; 95% CI: 1.08, 1.84; P=0.011). In the prospective analysis (16.5 follow-up years), the prudent dietary pattern was inversely associated with the risk of getting a hospital discharge diagnosis of depression (HR: 0.66; 95% CI 0.47, 0.93; P=0.018).
Conclusions: Adherence to healthy dietary pattern is associated with lower risk of getting a hospital discharge diagnosis of depression.
Keywords: Depression; Depressive symptoms; Diet; Dietary pattern; Factor analysis.
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