(Press-News.org) Researchers from the universities of Navarra and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria have demonstrated that the ingestion of trans-fats and saturated fats increase the risk of suffering depression, and that olive oil, on the other hand, protects against this mental illness.
They have confirmed this after studying 12,059 SUN Project volunteers over the course of six years; the volunteers had their diet, lifestyle and ailments analyzed at the beginning of the project, over its course and at the end of the project. In this way the researchers confirmed that despite the fact that at the beginning of the study none of the volunteers suffered from depression, at the end of the study 657 new cases had been detected.
Of all these cases, the participants with an elevated consumption of trans-fats (fats present in artificial form in industrially-produced pastries and fast food, and naturally present in certain whole milk products) "presented up to a 48% increase in the risk of depression when they were compared to participants who did not consume these fats," affirmed Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, first author of the article.
In addition, the study demonstrated a dose-response relationship, "whereby the more trans-fats were consumed, the greater the harmful effect they produced in the volunteers," the expert stated.
Furthermore, the team, directed by Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Navarra, also analyzed the influence of polyunsaturated fats (abundant in fish and vegetable oils) and of olive oil on the occurrence of depression. "In fact, we discovered that this type of healthier fats, together with olive oil, are associated with a lower risk of suffering depression," emphasized the researcher and director of the SUN Project.
150 million persons depressed worldwide
Thus, the results of the study corroborate the hypothesis of a greater incidence of the disease in countries of the north of Europe compared to the countries of the south, where a Mediterranean dietary pattern prevails. Nevertheless, experts have noted that the incidence of the disease has increased in recent years, so that today some 150 million persons are affected worldwide, where it is the principal cause of loss of years of life in those countries with a medium-to-high per capita income.
This due, according to Almudena Sánchez Villegas, "to radical changes in the sources of fats consumed in Western diets, where we have substituted certain types of beneficial fats—polyunsaturated and monounsaturated in nuts, vegetable oils and fish—for the saturated and trans-fats found in meats, butter and other products such as mass-produced pastries and fast food".
In addition, the research—published in the online peer reviewed journal PLoS ONE—has been performed on a population with a low average intake of trans-fats, given that it made up only 0.4% of the total energy ingested by the volunteers. "Despite this, we observed an increase in the risk of suffering depression of nearly 50%. On this basis," concluded Miguel A. Martínez, "we derive the importance of taking this effect into account in countries like the U.S., where the percentage of energy derived from these foots is around 2.5%".
Finally, the analysis, headed by the University of Navarra and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, suggests that both depression as well as cardiovascular disease are influenced in a similar manner by diet, and might share similar mechanisms in their origin. This hypothesis is further suggested by numerous studies that indicate the harmful effect of trans-fats and saturated fats on the risk of cardiovascular disease.
INFORMATION:
Citation: Sanchez-Villegas A, Verberne L, De Irala J, Ruı´z-Canela M, Toledo E, et al. (2011) Dietary Fat Intake and the Risk of Depression: The SUN Project. PLoS ONE 6(1): e16268. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016268
Funding: Funding was provided by the University of Oslo (www.uio.no). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Contact: Almudena Sánchez Villegas
Department of Clinical Sciences, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Spain
asanchez@dcc.ulpgc.es
Jen Laloup
Public Library of Science
jlaloup@plos.org
PLEASE LINK TO THE SCIENTIFIC ARTICLE IN ONLINE VERSIONS OF YOUR REPORT (URL goes live after the embargo ends):
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016268
FOR A PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE FULL ARTICLE, VISIT THE FOLLOWING URL:
http://www.plos.org/press/pone-06-01-villegas.pdf
Disclaimer:
This press release refers to upcoming articles in PLoS ONE. The releases have been provided by the article authors and/or journal staff. Any opinions expressed in these are the personal views of the contributors, and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of PLoS. PLoS expressly disclaims any and all warranties and liability in connection with the information found in the release and article and your use of such information.
About PLoS ONE
PLoS ONE is the first journal of primary research from all areas of science to employ a combination of peer review and post-publication rating and commenting, to maximize the impact of every report it publishes. PLoS ONE is published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the open-access publisher whose goal is to make the world's scientific and medical literature a public resource.
END
LA JOLLA, CA – January 24, 2010 – Embargoed by the journal Neuron until January 26, 2010, noon, Eastern time – Connected highways of nerve cells carry information to and from different areas of the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Scientists are trying to draw a complete atlas of these connections—sometimes referred to as the "connectome"—to gain a better understanding of how the brain functions in health and disease.
New research conducted at The Scripps Research Institute shows that this road atlas undergoes constant revisions as the brain of a young animal ...
Most nature lovers know that the more colourful a male fish, reptile, or bird, the more likely it is to attract a female and to have healthy offspring. Females, on the other hand, tend to be drably coloured, perhaps to avoid predators while carrying, incubating, and caring for young.
Curiously, the female striped plateau lizard, which lives in the rocky slopes of Arizona's south-eastern mountains, is an exception to this rule in the animal world. Females are more colourful than males – displaying an orange patch on their throats during reproductive season – and the more ...
The mechanism that controls the internal 24-hour clock of all forms of life from human cells to algae has been identified by scientists.
Not only does the research provide important insight into health-related problems linked to individuals with disrupted clocks – such as pilots and shift workers – it also indicates that the 24-hour circadian clock found in human cells is the same as that found in algae and dates back millions of years to early life on Earth.
Two new studies out today in the journal Nature from the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh give insight ...
The direct ancestors of orang-utans were once widely distributed in south-east Asia but the two modern orang-utan species are confined to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Both species are endangered, largely as a consequence of destruction of their rainforest habitat. The orang-utans are the only great apes that spend most of their time in trees. Nevertheless, the species share a number of features with other apes: they are adept in their use of tools and live in complex social groups that show evidence of cultural learning.
A wide-ranging international consortium ...
War-time stress may lead to an increased risk death by coronary heart disease in later life. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Health Services Research surveyed a cohort of 55 year old Finnish WW2 veterans in 1980, and then carried out a follow-up study 28 years later.
Dr Seppo Nikkari and his team from the University of Tampere in Finland conducted the study. He said "During the 28 year follow up , out of 412 deaths, 140 were due to coronary heart disease (CHD), making wounded veterans 1.7 times more likely to die from CHD than the comparison ...
DALLAS – Jan. 26, 2011 – Type 1 diabetes could be converted to an asymptomatic, non-insulin-dependent disorder by eliminating the actions of a specific hormone, new findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers suggest.
These findings in mice show that insulin becomes completely superfluous and its absence does not cause diabetes or any other abnormality when the actions of glucagon are suppressed. Glucagon, a hormone produced by the pancreas, prevents low blood sugar levels in healthy individuals. It causes high blood sugar in people with type 1 diabetes.
"We've ...
Northwestern University researchers have developed a new technique for rapidly prototyping nanoscale devices and structures that is so inexpensive the "print head" can be thrown away when done.
Hard-tip, soft-spring lithography (HSL) rolls into one method the best of scanning-probe lithography -- high resolution -- and the best of polymer pen lithography -- low cost and easy implementation.
HSL could be used in the areas of electronics (electronic circuits), medical diagnostics (gene chips and arrays of biomolecules) and pharmaceuticals (arrays for screening drug candidates), ...
Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified a therapy that may enhance memory and prevent the loss of long-term memory. The research is published in the January 27th issue of Nature.
Led by Cristina Alberini, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai, the research team evaluated how a protein called insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II), a gene expressed during brain development that declines with aging, impacts memory formation and retention.
IGF-II is enriched in the adult brain in several areas, including the hippocampus and cortex, which ...
Researchers have discovered that a drug used to treat dialysis catheter malfunction in kidney dialysis patients may now also help prevent both malfunction as well as infections.
Dr. Brenda Hemmelgarn from the University of Calgary Faculty of Medicine and her colleague Dr. Nairne Scott-Douglas, both members of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta, undertook a randomized trial at 11 sites across Canada. 115 hemodialysis patients were administered the usual catheter locking solution of heparin after every dialysis session, while 110 patients received rt-PA once ...
Cancer researchers at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) have discovered that targeting an enzyme called Uroporphyrinogen Decarboxylase (UROD) can sensitize diseased tissue to radiation and chemotherapy, which could mean fewer side effects for individuals with head and neck cancer.
The findings, published online today in Science Translational Medicine (http://stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.3001922) are significant because they suggest that targeting UROD – identified for the first time as a key player in human cancers – can selectively boost the effects ...
