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Intake of flavonoids and risk of dementia

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Abstract

It has been postulated that oxidative stress may play a key role in dementia. This is substantiated by the recent discovery of the protective effect of wine. In wine, the flavonoids – powerful antioxidant substances also contained in tea, fruits and vegetables – have been thought to offer such protection. We investigated whether flavonoid intake could be associated with a lower incidence of dementia in a cohort of 1367 subjects above 65 years of age (Paquid). A questionnaire was used to evaluate their intake of flavonoids and subjects were followed-up for 5 years between 1991 and 1996: 66 incident cases of dementia were observed. We estimated the relative risk (RR) of dementia according to tertiles of flavonoid intake using a Cox model. The age-adjusted RR of dementia was 0.55 for the two highest tertiles compared to the lowest (95% CI: 0.34–0.90; p = 0.02). After additional adjustment for gender, education, weight and vitamin C intake, the RR was 0.49 (95% CI: 0.26–0.92; p = 0.04). We conclude that the intake of antioxidant flavonoids is inversely related to the risk of incident dementia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U330, 146 rue Léo Saignat, 33076, Bordeaux cedex, France

    D. Commenges, V. Scotet, S. Renaud, H. Jacqmin-Gadda, P. Barberger-Gateau & J.-F. Dartigues

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  1. D. Commenges
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  2. V. Scotet
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  3. S. Renaud
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  4. H. Jacqmin-Gadda
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  5. P. Barberger-Gateau
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  6. J.-F. Dartigues
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Commenges, D., Scotet, V., Renaud, S. et al. Intake of flavonoids and risk of dementia. Eur J Epidemiol 16, 357–363 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007614613771

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