Dietary patterns and prevalence of multimorbidity in women in southern Brazil

This study aimed to investigate the association between dietary patterns and prevalence of multimorbidity in women.

This population-based cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 and included 1,128 women aged 20 to 69 years living in the urban area of São Leopoldo municipality, southern Brazil. Multimorbidity was defined as the presence of two or more chronic conditions, among the 26 identified. Poisson regression with robust variance was used to investigate the association between the three dietary patterns (healthy, risk, and Brazilian), using different models adjusted for sociodemographic, behavioral, and nutritional status variables.

The results showed differences in the prevalence of adherence to different dietary patterns and multimorbidity across age groups, with a prevalence of multimorbidity and a healthy dietary pattern showing a direct linear trend with age, whereas the risk dietary pattern showed an inverse linear trend with age. The prevalence of the Brazilian dietary pattern remained constant despite differences in age. After adjustment, we found that women with greater adherence to the Brazilian dietary pattern showed a 40% reduction in the prevalence of multimorbidity compared with those with less adherence (prevalence ratio, 0.60; 95% confidence interval, 0.40-0.86).

The results revealed that the prevalence of multimorbidity was significantly lower in women with greater adherence to the Brazilian dietary pattern and highlight the importance of dietary interventions in early adulthood as a way to prevent multimorbidity in women.