Mediterranean diet related metabolite profiles and cognitive performance.

Background & Aims: Evidence suggests that adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MedDiet) affects human metabolism and may contribute to better cognitive performance. However, the underlying mechanisms are not clear.

Objective: We generated a metabolite profile for adherence to MedDiet and evaluated its cross-sectional association with aspects of cognitive performance.

Methods: A total of 1250 healthy Greek middle-aged adults from the Epirus Health Study cohort were included in the analysis. Adherence to the MedDiet was assessed using the 14-point Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS); cognition was measured using the Trail Making Test, the Verbal Fluency test and the Logical Memory test. A targeted metabolite profiling (n = 250 metabolites) approach was applied, using a high-throughput nuclear magnetic resonance platform. We used elastic net regularized regressions, with a 10-fold cross-validation procedure, to identify a metabolite profile for MEDAS. We evaluated the associations of the identified metabolite profile and MEDAS with cognitive tests, using multivariable linear regression models.

Results: We identified a metabolite profile composed of 42 metabolites, mainly lipoprotein subclasses and fatty acids, significantly correlated with MedDiet adherence (Pearson r = 0.35, P-value = 5.5 × 10). After adjusting for known risk factors and accounting for multiple testing, the metabolite profile and MEDAS were not associated with the cognitive tests.

Conclusions: A plasma metabolite profile related to better adherence to the MedDiet was not associated with the tested aspects of cognitive performance, in a middle-aged Mediterranean population.