American Major Dietary Patterns and Age-related Cataract

Abstract

Purpose : We aimed to evaluate the associations between major American dietary patterns and risk for cortical and nuclear cataract.

Methods : Dietary consumption data of 37 food groups were collected by a 90-item Block food frequency questionnaire administered at the baseline Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS). Using the AREDS System for Classifying Cataracts, 2007 eyes with pure nuclear lens opacity, 1281 eyes with pure cortical opacity, and 2491 eyes without lens opacity were identified from 7,575 eligible eyes. Associations between dietary patterns and pure lens opacities were examined by using the generalized estimating approach to logistic regression.

Results : Two major dietary patterns were identified by principle component analysis and named Oriental and Western patterns. The Oriental pattern was characterized by higher intake of vegetables, legumes, fruit, whole grains, tomatoes, and seafood. The Western pattern was characterized by higher intake of red meat, processed meat, high-fat dairy products, French fries, refined grains, and eggs. We ranked our participants according to how closely their diets line up with the two patterns by calculating the two pattern scores for each participant. For all nuclear opacity (grade >2; approximately equivalent to LOCS III grades 3.0-3.9), the multivariate-adjusted odds ratio (OR) comparing the highest to lowest tertile of the Western pattern score was 1.36 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06-1.76; P_trend=0.03), and for mild nuclear opacity (grade <4 but >2; approximately equivalent to LOCS III grades <5.0-6.4 but >3.0-3.9) the OR was 1.45 (1.12-1.89; P_trend=0.01). No other significant associations were noted.

Conclusions : Our data indicate that consuming a Western dietary pattern is significantly associated with increased odds of early nuclear opacity.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.