An unfavorable dietary pattern is associated with symptomatic peripheral artery disease

Diet has an essential role in primary and secondary cardiovascular prevention by modulating various cardiovascular risk factors. The need to have easily useable tools seems essential to facilitate the daily practice of clinicians in order to propose the most optimal management of their patients' diet. The aim of this study was to compare the diet assessed with a simple food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) between patients with symptomatic peripheral artery disease (PAD) and healthy subjects.

In this ancillary study (ELECTRO-PAD study), we included symptomatic PAD patients and healthy participants. All participants filled a FFQ previously validated called Cardiovascular-Dietary-Questionnaire 2 (CDQ-2). CDQ-2 allows the calculation of different scores: global food score, saturated fatty acids score (SFA), unsaturated fatty acids score (UFA), fruit and vegetable score. The higher the score, the better the diet. We compared the different scores between PAD patients and healthy participants. We included 37 PAD patients and 40 healthy subjects. Mean global score was significantly lower in PAD patients compared to the healthy participants (5.35 ± 7.65 vs 10.60 ± 5.81; p = 0.0011). Similarly, the sub-scores concerning unsaturated fatty acids and fruits-vegetables were significantly lower in PAD patients (p < 0.010). Only the sub-score concerning saturated fatty acids was not significantly different (p = 0.8803) between PAD patients and healthy participants.

CDQ-2 highlights that PAD patients have an unfavorable diet compared with healthy participants. CDQ-2 is a tool of interest to help the clinicians for dietary advice of PAD patients.