The Impact of Nutrition on Cognitive Performance in a Frail Elderly Population Living in Northern Italy

Abstract

Objectives: There is increasing evidence for a protective role of nutritional factors on cognitive decline. Many studies have reported a preventive effect of specific dietary patterns, in particular of the Mediterranean diet (MD), on the risk of cognitive decline, but only limited evidence is available about its effects on neuropsychological performance. The aim of this work is to evaluate the relationship between nutrition and cognitive performance in a frail elderly population living in Northern Italy. Methods: In this study we have investigated the impact of the Mediterranean dietary pattern on cognitive performance in a frail elderly population (n = 140). Structural equation modeling was applied to highlight the interrelationship between three cognitive domains: i) Verbal Fluency; ii) Attention/executive function; iii) Memory, and two MD factors: i) Nutrition; ii) Anthropometric/physical activity. In addition, the Multiple Correspondence Analysis was performed to detect the food and nutrients with the highest association with MD and nutritional status. Results: In our sample, 54% of subjects have a medium-high adherence to MD and only 4% have a risk of malnutrition. The variable Nutrition was significantly associated (p < 0.001) with the cognitive domain Attention/executive function, with an increase in Nutrition directly associated with a better performance in Attention/executive function. Conclusions: This study provides preliminary evidence of an association between good nutritional status, related to a high adherence to the MD, and cognitive performance in a non-clinical elderly population living in Northern Italy.

Keywords:

• Nutrition
• cognitive performance
• frailty
• Mediterranean diet
• executive function

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study protocol was ethically approved by the Lombardy Region Ethics Committee – IRCCS Carlo Besta Foundation Section (approval n. 45/2017) and by the Ethics Committee of the IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefrattelli – CEIOC https://www.fatebenefratelli.it/comitato-etico (approval n. 110/2017). All participants provided written informed consent forms.

Competing interests

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Authors’ contributions

SC, AB, SB designed and conceptualized the study and contributed to critical revision of the manuscript; CF performed statistical analysis and contributed to drafting the manuscript; VG and GB collected data and contributed to critical revision of the manuscript; RDA and AL contributed to interpretation of data and critical revision of the manuscript; SF coordinated the study and contributed to collect data and drafting the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The dataset of raw data generated for this study can be found in the Zenodo Data Repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6256131.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Italian Ministry of Health, Convenzione n. 115/RF-2011-02351933 (Smart Food and Lifestyle Interventions for Healthy Brain Aging) and by Ricerca Corrente Italian Ministry of Health.