The Impact of Mediterranean Diet on Survival in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

<bold>Purpose:</bold> Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) bears high disease burden and causes high mortality. Besides pharmacologic therapy with inhaler, diet style and nutrition support also play important role. The Mediterranean diet is associated with lung function improvement. How about the beneficial and protective effects of Mediterranean diet on survival is unknown. What is the key component of Mediterranean diet is still under investigated. <bold>Materials and Method:</bold> We retrospectively reviewed the data derived from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) cohort during 2007 to 2012. All enrolled patients were aged above 18 years and total 1,610 cases with obstructive ventilation impairment (FEV1/FVC <70%) were analyzed. Alternative Mediterranean Diet Index (aMED) score was indicated the extend of adherence to Mediterranean diet. We tried to discover the association of aMED with mortality. Further key component of Mediterranean associated with mortality was also explored. <bold>Results:</bold> In our NHANES cohort, the mean age was 56.1 years and male was predominant (60.5 %). The smoking rate reached up to 71.3%. The average aMED score was 3.35. The hazard ratio (HR) of aMED with mortality was 0.67 (95% of CI: 0.51 ~0.87 and p=0.004). We found four key components for reducing mortality in COPD patients were nuts, fruits, vegetables and MUFA/SFA. Higher scores of above four components were associated with lower mortality. <bold>Conclusion:</bold> We found Mediterranean diet could reduce all-cause mortality for COPD group. The four key components of Mediterranean diet were nuts, fruits, vegetables and MUFA/SFA.