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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Med.
Sec. Geriatric Medicine
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1463569
This article is part of the Research Topic Nutritional Interventions for Controlling the Aging Process View all articles

Dietary Diversity contributes to delay biological aging

Provisionally accepted
Wen Liao Wen Liao 1Meng-ying Li Meng-ying Li 2*
  • 1 Pingxiang People's Hospital, Pingxiang, China
  • 2 Jiujiang First People's Hospital, Jiujiang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Aims: As aging is a major risk factor for chronic diseases, strategies to promote healthy aging are essential. Dietary diversity has been reported to be beneficial for human health, however, the role in the biological aging process remains underexplored. Our aim was to analyse the potential link between diet diversity and aging. Methods: 22,600 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were included in this study. Dietary diversity was assessed by the dietary diversity score (DDS), which aggregated data on participants' self-reported dietary categories for the 5 major food groups (18 subgroups) over 2 rounds. Biological age was determined using the phenotypic age, with the residual between biological age and chronological age, phenotypic age acceleration, representing biological aging advance. Weighted multivariate regressions analysis were used to examine the relationship between DDS and phenotypic age acceleration. Sensitivity, subgroup interaction and mediation analyses were employed for further analysis. Results: Higher DDS was consistently associated with slower phenotypic age acceleration (β < 0, P < 0.001). Subgroup analyses revealed that the inverse relationship persisted across categories, with minimal interaction effects. Sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of results. The oxidative stress indicator glutamyltransferase partially mediated the relationship between DDS and aging [4.9% (3.6%, 6.0%), P < 0.001]. Conclusions: Dietary diversity is associated with a slower rate of biological aging, which may be due in part to reduced oxidative stress. These findings underscore the potential of a rich, broad-spectrum diet to promote healthy aging and reduce the burden of age-related diseases.

    Keywords: Dietary diversity score, biological aging, NHANES, Mediation analysis, Glutamyltransferase

    Received: 12 Jul 2024; Accepted: 30 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Liao and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Meng-ying Li, Jiujiang First People's Hospital, Jiujiang, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.