the relationship between the score of adherence to the mediterranean diet, the dietary approaches to stop hypertension diet, the healthy eating index, and the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in iranian adults: a case-control study

Background: evidence suggests that healthy dietary patterns such as dietary approaches to stop hypertension (dash), mediterranean diet (med), and healthy eating index 2015 (hei-2015) may reduce the risk of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (nafld) albeit with controversial results. objectives: this study aimed to investigate possible associations between the nafld risk and adherence to the med, dash, and hei-2015 diets. methods: a case-control study was conducted involving 122 nafld patients and 122 non-nafld patients. a gastroenterologist confirmed the nafld diagnosis. a 147-item food frequency questionnaire (ffq) was used to collect the dietary data, and the scores for med, dash diet, and hei-2015 were obtained. multivariable logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratio (or) and 95% confidence intervals (cis). results: the highest pentile of adherence to the dash diet was significantly associated with the lowest risk of nafld (or: 0.37, 95% ci: 0.14 - 0.92, p trend = 0.03). this association remained significant after adjustment for the confounding variable nafld (or: 0.33, 95% ci: 0.11 - 0.96, p trend = 0.04). no significant difference was found between nafld risk and adherence to the med and hei-2015. conclusions: this study demonstrated that the highest score of adherence to the dash diet was associated with the lowest risk of nafld.