DIETARY PATTERNS IN ROMANIAN PATIENTS WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES MELLITUS

Adherence to healthy dietary patterns leads to improvements in metabolic health and prevents the risk of diabetes and obesity. Current guidelines underscore the im-portance of focusing on individualized dietary patterns in nutritional therapy of diabetics. The objectives of this study were to identify the dietary patterns in Romanian patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and to investigate the impact of these dietary patterns on associat-ed anthropometric and metabolic parameters. Material and methods: A total of 118 adults were included in this cross-sectional, observational study. Demographic and lifestyle data, information on current pathologies and associated co-morbidities, anthropometric measure-ments and biological markers were obtained. Dietary intake was assessed via the EPIC food frequency questionnaire. Results: We identified three dietary patterns by principal compo-nent analysis, defined as Prudent, Western and Traditional. We found that patients belong-ing to the Western pattern had higher waist-to-hip ratio, higher glycated hemoglobin A1c and were significantly younger compared to those in the Prudent pattern. Alcohol intake was significantly higher in the Western compared to the Prudent pattern. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that the Western pattern, characterized by high intake of meat and meat products, eggs and soft drinks, has negative metabolic consequences in Romanian adult p a-tients with T2DM, compared to the Prudent pattern. The Traditional pattern was closer to the Prudent one.