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Mediterranean dietary traditions have long been associated with lower mortality rates and better health status. The Mediterranean dietary pattern has become customary to be represented in the form of a pyramid, the base of which refers to foods which are suggested to be consumed most frequently and the top of the pyramid to those foods consumed rarely. Recently, an index (diet score) that estimates the adherence level to Mediterranean diet was developed and associated with cardiovascular disease risk and biomarkers. In this work we present a computer program that can easily calculate this diet score, as well as its association with cardiovascular disease risk. The application of this software to the general public might be a useful tool for the reduction of the disease burden related with nutritional habits at population level.

Background: The elevation of blood pressure levels has been recognised as a determinant of the risk for several common cardiovascular diseases. In this work we examined the effect of Mediterranean type of diet on coronary risk in subjects with hypertension., Methods: CARDIO2000 consisted of 848 randomly selected hospitalised patients (695 males, 58 +/- 10 years old; 153 females, 65 +/- 9 years old) for first event of coronary heart disease (CHD) and 1078 paired, by sex-age, hospitalised controls without CHD. The adoption of the Mediterranean diet was assessed through a validated questionnaire developed by the National School of Public Health., Results: 418 (49%) of the patients and 303 (28%) of the controls were hypertensive. Of them 21 (5%) patients and 36 (12%) controls were unaware of their condition, 94 (22%) and 34 (11%) were untreated, 148 (35%) and 111 (36%) were uncontrolled and 155 (38%) and 122 (41%) were controlled (P<0.01). One hundred and sixty-two (19%) of the patients and 265 (25%) of the controls (P<0.01) adopted the Mediterranean type of diet. Our results suggest that the adoption of Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of developing acute coronary syndromes by 17% (odds ratio=0.83, 95% CI 0.73--0.88, P<0.01) in controlled hypertensive subjects, by 8% (odds ratio=0.92, 95% CI 0.87-0.95, P<0.05) in unaware, by 7% (odds ratio=0.93, 95% CI 0.88-0.95, P<0.05) in acknowledged but uncontrolled and by 20% (odds ratio=0.80, 95% CI 0.71-0.89, P<0.01) in normotensive subjects., Conclusion: According to our findings the adoption of the Mediterranean diet is associated with the reduction of coronary risk in hypertensive subjects.

Background: In recent decades various lifestyle factors have been associated with the increasing risk of coronary heart disease. The aim of this study is to assess coronary risk, based on established and emerging lifestyle risk factors such as smoking habit, physical activity, alcohol consumption and depression in a Mediterranean population., Methods: During 2000--2001, 535 male and 126 female patients with a first event of an acute coronary syndrome and 661 controls matched by sex, age and region were entered into the study. Conditional logistic regression analysis estimated the relative risks of developing coronary heart disease under several scenarios., Results: The multivariate analysis showed that stopping smoking is exponentially related to the reduction of coronary risk. By contrast, passive smoking increases the risk from 48% to 112%. Familial smoking habits are related to current smoking status, increasing the coronary risk fourfold. The effect of depression on coronary risk differs according to gender (+15% in males vs. 32% in females), and interacts with retirement, current smoking, physical inactivity, alcohol consumption and social status, increasing the risk from 15% to 189%. A J-shape association was found between alcohol intake and coronary risk Physical inactivity doubles the coronary risk, while long-term physical activity plays a preventive role in the reduction of coronary risk, even in the elderly., Conclusion: Analysis of the data showed that the cluster of established and emerging lifestyle factors poses its particular role for further investigation in the aetiology of coronary heart disease.