[Empirical dietary patterns and their influence on health in epidemiological studies]

The last two or three decades in the epidemiology of nutrition empirical approaches to assessing the diet of the population are increasingly being used. However, in Russian studies, these approaches are used extremely rarely, which may be due to insufficient knowledge of the essence, methodological aspects and the field of application of posterior dietary patterns. In this regard, the aim of this review was to highlight the essence, methods and main results of using empirical approaches to assessing the diet of the population. Results. This review discusses the main methodological features of multivariate analysis methods - factor analysis (principal component analysis) and cluster analysis. The main trends of dietary patterns characteristic of the epidemiology of nutrition, and various in different countries and regions are shown. The results of studies of the impact of dietary patterns on some indicators of health status (cardiovascular and oncological diseases, diseases of the musculoskeletal system, diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome and its components, mortality) are considered. A brief description of the few Russian studies that used the principal component method in identifying empirical dietary patterns of population is given. In general, this review indicates that the use of multidimensional statistics to highlight population dietary patterns as part of an empirical assessment is nowadays one of the most important components of nutrition epidemiology in different countries. An empirical assessment allows us to consider the diets of the population from a factual point of view and significantly supplements the scientific knowledge obtained using other epidemiological approaches. Currently, considerable experience in the development of methodological approaches to dietary patterns, as well as in the analysis of their associations with various indicators of health status has been accumulated. Conclusion. All this testifies to the high relevance of the considered epidemiological approaches and the need for their testing in Russian conditions, which, perhaps, will give new knowledge about the dietary patterns formation and its impact on the health status of Russians.