Olive oil and CVD: accruing evidence of a protective effect

摘要

CHD is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Remarkably, CHD is largely preventable, as unhealthy lifestyles (smoking, lack of exercise and poor dietary habits) contribute to nearly 80 % of population-attributable risk (1,2) . Among these lifestyle components, diet has been well studied. After decades of epidemiological, clinical and experimental research, an impressive body of scienti?c evidence has been built on the profound in?uence that nutrients, foods and dietary patterns have on health outcomes, including CHD (3,4) . The present paradigm in nutritional epidemiology is to use dietpattern analysis instead of isolated food or nutrient analysis, because it can assess the cumulative effects of the overall diet (5,6) . In this sense, there is accumulating scienti?c evidence that, among widely followed dietary patterns, the Mediterranean diet (MeDiet) might be the healthiest one. For instance, a recent meta-analysis of eighteen prospective cohort studies showed that adherence to the MeDiet confers a signi?cant and consistent protection in relation to the occurrence of major chronic degenerative diseases, including CVD incidence and mortality (7) . Additionally, a systematic review of the effects of thirty-two candidate dietary factors on CHD risk ranked the MeDiet first as the most likely dietary model to provide causal protection (4).