Mediterranean diet and metabolic status in post-menopausal women living in a mediterranean area

BACKGROUND: Limited data are available regarding the association between dietary habits and metabolic outcomes in post-menopausal women living in Italy. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relation between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and prevalence of overweight/obesity, type-2 diabetes, hypertension and dyslipidemias in a sample of post-menopausal women. METHODS: Data on 499 women were extracted from a population-based representative sample collected in Sicily, southern Italy. High adherence to the Mediterranean diet was defined as being in the highest quartile of a score used to calculate the level of adherence in the entire cohort. RESULTS: Only 15.8% (n = 83) of the study sample was found to have high adherence to the Mediterranean diet; these individuals were less likely to be overweight [odds ratio (OR) = 0.52, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.31–0.86] and obese (OR = 0.38, 95% CI: 0.18–0.78) as well as having dyslipidemias (OR = 0.50, 95% CI: 0.30–0.84). Among individual components of the Mediterranean diet adherence score used, obesity was inversely associated with fruit component, type-2 diabetes with cereals and olive oil, hypertension with fruit and dairy products, dyslipidemias with legumes and dairy products. CONCLUSIONS: Higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with better metabolic status in post-menopausal women.