Dietary patterns and incident functional disability in elderly Japanese: the Ohsaki Cohort 2006 study

To date, little is known about the association between dietary pattern and disability in older adults. The present prospective cohort study investigated the association between dietary patterns and incident functional disability.

Information on food consumption and other lifestyle factors was collected from Japanese older persons aged ≥65 years via a questionnaire. Three dietary patterns (Japanese pattern, animal food pattern, and high dairy pattern) were derived using principal component analysis of the consumption of 39 food and beverage items. Data on functional disability were retrieved from the public Long-term Care Insurance database, in which participants were followed up for 5 years. The Cox model was used to estimate the multivariate-adjusted hazard ratios of incident functional disability.

Among 14,260 participants, the 5-year incidence of functional disability was 16.6%. The Japanese pattern score was associated with a lower risk of incident functional disability (hazard ratio of the highest quartile vs the lowest, 0.77; 95% confidence interval: 0.68-0.88; p trend <.001). An animal food pattern and a high dairy pattern tended to have a higher risk of incident functional disability, but not to a significant degree.

In Japanese older persons, the Japanese dietary pattern is associated with a decreased risk of incident functional disability.