# Mediterranean-Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet and cardiovascular disease and arrhythmias

## TL;DR

The MIND diet is linked to lower risks of cardiovascular disease and arrhythmias, especially heart failure, based on a large study of UK Biobank participants.

## Contribution

This study is the first to evaluate the MIND diet's association with arrhythmias and compare it with other diet indices using UK Biobank data.

## Key findings

- Higher MIND diet scores were linked to reduced risks of cardiovascular disease and its subtypes like heart failure.
- The protective effect of the MIND diet was stronger for CVD than arrhythmias after adjusting for metabolic factors.
- Associations varied by age and obesity, and diet indices showed different patterns of risk reduction.

## Abstract

This study aimed to explore associations between the Mediterranean-Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet and the risk of incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) and arrhythmias, together with comparing to three other pre-existing diet quality indices.

A prospective analysis was conducted using the UK Biobank. MIND diet score, Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS), Recommended Food Score (RFS), and Healthy Diet Indicator (HDI) were computed using the Oxford WebQ. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to calculate hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).

193,983 participants were included in the CVD analyses, and 190,529 for arrhythmias. Compared with participants in the lowest quartile of MIND diet score, participants in the highest quartile had a lower risk of CVD (HR 0.86; 95% CI 0.81–0.91), ischemic heart disease (0.92; 0.85–0.98), stroke (0.86; 0.75–0.97), heart failure (0.79; 0.71–0.88), and total arrhythmias (0.93; 0.88–0.99), after adjusting for demographics, lifestyle, and chronic conditions. With further adjustment for metabolic profiles, the associations remain significant for CVD and its subtypes but become non-significant for arrhythmias. Strengths of association varied across diet scores, with associations for MEDAS (CVD and arrhythmias) and MIND (CVD subtypes). The associations with CVD were linear for MIND and MEDAS and non-linear for RFS. The association between MEDAS and arrhythmias was non-linear. We observed significant interactions by age and obesity for CVD.

The MIND diet was associated with CVD and arrhythmias, relying on a single day of dietary data to derive dietary patterns. The findings suggest that following the MIND diet was associated with a lower risk of CVD, heart failure specifically, and arrhythmias.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12916-025-04546-5.