Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2003 Jun 26;348(26):2599-608.
doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa025039.

Adherence to a Mediterranean diet and survival in a Greek population

Antonia Trichopoulou  1 , Tina Costacou, Christina Bamia, Dimitrios Trichopoulos
Affiliations
Free article

Adherence to a Mediterranean diet and survival in a Greek population

Antonia Trichopoulou et al. N Engl J Med. .
Free article

Abstract

Background: Adherence to a Mediterranean diet may improve longevity, but relevant data are limited.

Methods: We conducted a population-based, prospective investigation involving 22,043 adults in Greece who completed an extensive, validated, food-frequency questionnaire at base line. Adherence to the traditional Mediterranean diet was assessed by a 10-point Mediterranean-diet scale that incorporated the salient characteristics of this diet (range of scores, 0 to 9, with higher scores indicating greater adherence). We used proportional-hazards regression to assess the relation between adherence to the Mediterranean diet and total mortality, as well as mortality due to coronary heart disease and mortality due to cancer, with adjustment for age, sex, body-mass index, physical-activity level, and other potential confounders.

Results: During a median of 44 months of follow-up, there were 275 deaths. A higher degree of adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with a reduction in total mortality (adjusted hazard ratio for death associated with a two-point increment in the Mediterranean-diet score, 0.75 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.64 to 0.87]). An inverse association with greater adherence to this diet was evident for both death due to coronary heart disease (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.67 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.47 to 0.94]) and death due to cancer (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.76 [95 percent confidence interval, 0.59 to 0.98]). Associations between individual food groups contributing to the Mediterranean-diet score and total mortality were generally not significant.

Conclusions: Greater adherence to the traditional Mediterranean diet is associated with a significant reduction in total mortality.

PubMed Disclaimer

Comment in

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources

  NODES
Association 2
INTERN 2
twitter 2