[P2–555]: THE MIND DIET AND INCIDENT DEMENTIA: FINDINGS FROM THE WOMEN's HEALTH INITIATIVE MEMORY STUDY

The Mediterranean and Dash Diets, initially associated with better cardiovascular health, have also been associated with improved cognition in older adults. Drawing from both diets, Morris et al. developed the MIND Diet, which focuses on neuroprotective dietary factors and has been associated with reduced risk of incident Alzheimer's Disease in a community sample. To replicate this finding we evaluated associations between the MIND diet and dementia risk in the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS), a nationwide cohort of women who have been followed for up to 20 years. We hypothesized that WHIMS women who followed a diet more closely aligned with the MIND Diet would have a reduced risk for probable dementia. We used baseline food frequency questionnaire data from 7,057 WHIMS participants (mean age 71 years) to calculate MIND Diet scores, which were then categorized into four quartiles. Cox regression models were used to evaluate the relative risk of probable dementia associated with quartiles of the MIND Diet, with the lowest MIND Diet quartile as referent. Models were adjusted for baseline age, race/ethnicity, education, hormone therapy treatment, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol requiring treatment, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication use, body mass index, physical activity, caloric intake, geographic region, smoking, and alcohol use. Probable dementia status was adjudicated centrally according to standard criteria based on longitudinal clinical data and annual neurocognitive assessments, supplemented with informant Dementia Questionnaires and health history. Over an average of 9.7 years of follow-up, there were 615 incident probable dementia cases. Participants with diets that were more closely aligned with the MIND Diet had a lower risk of probable dementia, adjusted for covariates. Compared to the reference group (lowest MIND scores), adjusted hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) in order from low to high score quartile were: 0.76 (0.62–0.94); 0.79 (0.62–0.99); and 0.66 (0.50–0.86); (pfor trend=0.01). Dietary patterns more closely aligned with the MIND Diet were associated with a lower risk of probable dementia in a large sample of postmenopausal women. The current study offers additional evidence in support of the MIND Diet as a potential method to reduce dementia risk.