The Association between Dietary Antioxidant Indices and Cardiac Disease: Baseline Data of Kharameh Cohort Study

Oxidative stress contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease. Tools for evaluating the anti-inflammatory and antioxidative characteristics of an individual’s diet as a whole may be valuable for assessing the combined effects of dietary antioxidants on health. This population-based study aimed to investigate the association between dietary antioxidants and cardiac disease.

In this population-based cross-sectional study, 10439 individuals aged 40-70 years were recruited during 2014-2017 in Kherameh cohort study which is a part of the Prospective Epidemiological Research Studies in Iran (PERSIAN). The food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) with 130 food items was used to assess the dietary intakes. Vitamin A, E, C, selenium, zinc and Manganese intakes were used to compute dietary antioxidant index (DAI) and dietary antioxidant quality score (DAQs). Chi-square and independent sample T-test was used for comparing qualitative and quantitative variables between the groups respectively Logistic regression analysis was applied for evaluating the association between cardiac disease, DAI and DAQS score after adjusting for covariates.

The participants’ mean age was 52.1±8.3 years. Among all, 4356 (41.7%) were overweight and 1892 (18.1%) were obese. According to the results, odds of cardiac diseases decreased by increasing DAI score (OR=0.80, P value<0.001), Odds of cardiac diseases increased by lower DAQS after adjusting for demographic variables including age, sex, BMI, Marital status and hypertension (OR=0.799, P value=0.002).

The role of anti-oxidants in reducing the odds of cardiovascular disease is very important. Our results highlighted that DAQS and DAI had protective effect on the odds of cardiovascular disease. Therefore, it is suggested that anti-oxidants as zinc, manganese, selenium, and vitamins A, E and C should be taken through food to reduce the risk of the disease.