The relationship between the healthy eating index and an alternate healthy eating index with the risk factors for cardiovascular disease in a population from northeastern Iran

Background

The Healthy Eating Index (HEI) is used widely to investigate diet quality. It is used for a number of different applications, for example to measure compliance with dietary recommendations and guidelines. The Alternate Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) was created in 2002 and was designed to improve the ability to predict major chronic disease risks.

Objective

The main objective of the present study was to assess the associations between the HEI/AHEI with several cardiovascular disease risk factors (RFs) within a population sample of adults from northeastern Iran and to compare the predictive values obtained using HEI for these cardiovascular RFs with the values obtained using AHEI.

Material and methods

A total sample of 748 men, were recruited from Sarakhs City, in northeastern Iran. The mean age of study participants was 43.50 ± 8.88 years. Anthropometric indices were measured based on standard methods. Fasting blood samples (12 hrs) were collected from all subjects to determine several biochemical measures. HEI/AHEI were used to assess the quality of diet.

Results

There were no significant differences in diet quality with respect to the presence or absence of obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertriglyceridemia. AHEI was significantly higher among subjects with a high serum levels of sensitive-C reactive protein (Hs-CRP) (p = 0.005), and the HEI was higher in subjects with a high serum copper (p = 0.01). There were no significant correlations between HEI/AHEI with CVD risk factors.

Conclusions

The results showed that there were no significant associations between the HEI/AHEI with CVD risk factors in the study population.