Mediterranean Personalized Diet Combined with Physical Activity Therapy for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases in Italian Women.

Laura Di Renzo,Giulia Cinelli,Giuseppe Cenname,Maria Dri,Alda Attinà,Claudia Leggeri,Antonino De Lorenzo,Chiara Salimei,Ernesto Esposito,Gaetano Chiricolo,Alberto Pujia,Paola Gualtieri

doi:10.3390/nu12113456

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and inflammatory risk indexes are used to calculate the exposure to morbidity. Most of them are suggested by the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association to predict the risk of CVDs diagnosis in primary prevention, instead of treating the ongoing pathology. Prevention starts from habit changes with the prescription of diet and physical activity (PA). The aim of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of a personalized Mediterranean Diet (MD) and a PA intervention, on the risk indexes Atherogenic Index of Plasma (AIP), Lipid Accumulation Product (LAP) and Fatty Liver Index (FLI) in a population of women at risk of CVDs with different pathological conditions. After treatment, patients achieved the best results in body composition (BC) and laboratory tests. The BC analysis showed a significant reduction of total body Fat Mass (FM). CVDs risk indexes significantly decreased, except for Neutrophil/Lymphocyte (NLR) and Platelet/Lymphocyte Ratios (PLR). The reduction of the CVDs indexes associated with lipid profile was linked to both weight and FM decrease. AIP and LAP were significantly reduced when losing fat mass and body weight, respectively. A personalized MD therapy plus a PA program led to body weight loss, BC remodelling and risk indexes reduction.

Highlights

The World Health Organization (WHO) declares obesity as a risk factor for non-communicable diseases (NCD) [1,2], consisting of a multifactorial pathology and chronic low-grade inflammatory disease [3]
The nutritional evaluation consisted of a medical examination, anthropometric measurements, laboratory tests, the determination of body composition analysis carried out using both Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) (BIA 101S, Akern/RJL Systems, Pontassieve, Florence, Italy) and Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) (I-DXA, GE Medical Systems, Milwaukee, WI, USA)
A total of 71 patients were invited to participate to the study

Summary

Introduction

The World Health Organization (WHO) declares obesity as a risk factor for non-communicable diseases (NCD) [1,2], consisting of a multifactorial pathology and chronic low-grade inflammatory disease [3]. As adiposopathy consisting not so much in weight gain rather in excess fat mass [5], the Body Mass Index (BMI) cannot define obesity [6,7], and it is not sufficient to evaluate the risk of developing a chronic disease. Obesity must be evaluated with tools that measure the amount of fat mass and consider the relationship between environment-genes and metabolic diseases [8]. Obesity may worsen metabolic disease in adverse endocrine and immune responses triggered by body fat dysfunction [9]. Among the most known pathologies caused by fat mass accumulation, there is dyslipidemia and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) [10]

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