Dietary fatty acids, macronutrient substitutions, food sources and incidence of coronary heart disease: findings from the EPIC-CVD case-cohort study across nine European countries

Marinka Steur, Laura Johnson, S Sharp, Fumiaki Imamura, Ivonne Sluijs, Timothy J. Key , Angela Wood, R Chowdhury, Nita G Forouhi*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

32 Citations (Scopus)
51 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Abstract
2 Background: There is controversy about associations between total dietary fatty acids, their classes
3 (saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated fatty acids; SFAs, MUFAs, PUFAs, respectively) and
4 risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Specifically, the relevance of food sources of SFAs to CHD
5 associations is uncertain.
6 Methods and Results: We conducted a case-cohort study involving 10,529 incident CHD cases and a
7 random subcohort of 16,730 adults selected from a cohort of 385,747 participants in nine countries of
8 the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study. We estimated multivariable
9 adjusted country-specific hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) per 5% of energy
10 intake from dietary fatty acids, with and without isocaloric macronutrient substitutions, using
11 Prentice-weighted Cox regression models and pooled results using random-effects meta-analysis. We
12 found no evidence for associations of the consumption of total or fatty acid classes with CHD,
13 regardless of macronutrient substitutions. In analyses considering food sources, CHD incidence was
14 lower per 1% higher energy intake of SFAs from yoghurt (HRs [95% CIs]: 0.93 [0.88-0.99]), cheese
15 (0.98 [0.96-1.00]), and fish (0.87 [0.75-1.00]), but higher for SFAs from red meat (1.07 [1.02-1.12])
16 and butter (1.02 [1.00-1.04]).
17 Conclusions: This observational study found no strong associations of total fatty acids, SFAs,
18 MUFAs, and PUFAs, with incident CHD. By contrast, we found associations of SFAs with CHD in
19 opposite directions dependent on the food source. These findings should be further confirmed, but
20 support public health recommendations to consider food sources alongside the macronutrients they
21 contain, and suggest the importance of the overall food matrix.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere019814
Number of pages37
JournalJournal of the American Heart Association
Volume10
Issue number23
Early online date19 Nov 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Dec 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Dr Danesh reports grants, personal fees and non-financial support from Merck Sharp & Dohme, grants, personal fees, and nonfinancial support from Novartis, grants from Pfizer, and grants from AstraZeneca outside the submitted work. He is member of the International Cardiovascular and Metabolic Advisory Board for Novartis (since 2010); the Steering Committee of UK Biobank (since 2011); the MRC International Advisory Group (ING) member, London (since 2013); the MRC High Throughput Science ‘Omics Panel Member, London (since 2013); the Scientific Advisory Committee for Sanofi (since 2013); the International Cardiovascular and Metabolism Research and Development Portfolio Committee for Novartis; and the Astra Zeneca Genomics Advisory Board (2018). Dr Butterworth reports grants outside of this work from AstraZeneca, Biogen, BioMarin, Bioverativ, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, and Sanofi and personal fees from Novartis. The remaining authors have no disclosures to report.

Funding Information:
EPIC-CVD was supported by the European Commission Framework Programme 7 (HEALTH-F2-2012-279233), and the European Research Council (268834). The coordinating center was supported by core funding from the: United Kingdom MRC (G0800270; MR/L003120/1), British Heart Foundation (BHF) (SP/09/002; RG13/13/30194; RG/18/13/33946), and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) (BRC-1215-20014).* The establishment of the study subcohort was supported by the European Union Sixth Framework Programme (grant LSHM_CT_2006_037197 to the InterAct project) and the MRC Epidemiology Unit (grant MC_UU_00006/1). The coordination of EPIC is financially supported by International Agency for Research on Cancer and also by the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, which has additional infrastructure support provided by NIHR Imperial BRC. The national cohorts are supported by: Danish Cancer Society (Denmark); Ligue Contre le Cancer, Institut Gustave Roussy, Mutuelle Générale de l’Education Nationale, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (France); German Cancer Aid, German Cancer Research Center, German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany); Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro-AIRC-Italy, Compagnia di SanPaolo and National Research Council (Italy); Dutch Ministry of Public Health, Welfare and Sports, Netherlands Cancer Registry, LK Research Funds, Dutch Prevention Funds, Zorg Onderzoek Nederland, World Cancer Research Fund, Statistics Netherlands (the Netherlands); Health Research Fund– Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Regional Governments of Andalucía, Asturias, Basque Country, Murcia and Navarra, and the Catalan Institute of Oncology (Spain); Swedish Cancer Society, Swedish Research Council and County Councils of Skåne and Västerbotten (Sweden); Cancer Research UK (14136 to EPIC-Norfolk; C8221/A29017 to EPIC-Oxford), MRC (1000143 to EPIC-Norfolk; MR/M012190/1 to EPIC-Oxford) (United Kingdom). EPIC-Greece was supported by the Hellenic Health Foundation (Greece). M.S., N.J.W., N.G.F., and F.I. acknowledge support from MRC Epidemiology Unit (MC_UU_00006/1 and MC_UU_00006/3). N.J.W. and N.G.F. acknowledge support from NIHR* Cambridge BRC: Nutrition, Diet, and Lifestyle Research Theme (IS-BRC-1215-20014) and NGF is a NIHR Senior Investigator Award holder. M.S. was also supported by BHF for part of this work while working in the BHF Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom. R.Z.-R. thanks the “Miguel Servet” program (CP15/00100) from the Institute of Health Carlos III (co-funded by the European Social Fund–European Social Fund Investing in Your Future). A.W. was supported by a BHF-Turing Cardiovascular Data Science Award and by the European Commission-Innovative Medicines Initiative (BigData@Heart). R.C. was funded by a MRC-Newton project grant to study genetic risk factors of cardiovascular disease among Southeast Asian people and the Academy of Sciences Malaysia (grant no. MR/P013880/1) and a United Kingdom Research and Innovation-Global Challenges Research Fund Project Grant to study risk factors of noncommunicable diseases in Bangladesh. J.D. holds a BHF Professorship and a NIHR Senior Investigator Award.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Published on behalf of the American Heart Association, Inc., by Wiley.

Research Groups and Themes

  • SPS Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences

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