Adherence to a MIND-Like Dietary Pattern, Long-Term Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution, and MRI-Based Measures of Brain Volume: The Women's Health Initiative Memory Study-MRI

Background: Previous studies suggest that certain dietary patterns and constituents may be beneficial to brain health. Airborne exposures to fine particulate matter [particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ()] are neurotoxic, but the combined effects of dietary patterns and have not been investigated.

Objectives: We examined whether previously reported association between exposure and lower white matter volume (WMV) differed between women whose usual diet during the last 3 months before baseline was more or less consistent with a Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND)-like diet, a dietary pattern that may slow neurodegenerative changes.

Methods: This study included 1,302 U.S. women who were 65-79 y old and free of dementia in the period 1996-1998 (baseline). In the period 2005-2006, structural brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were performed to estimate normal-appearing brain volumes (excluding areas with evidence of small vessel ischemic disease). Baseline MIND diet scores were derived from a food frequency questionnaire. Three-year average exposure prior to MRI was estimated using geocoded participant addresses and a spatiotemporal model.

Results: Average total and temporal lobe WMVs were [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.001, 1.48) and (95% CI: 0.002, 0.37) higher, respectively, with each 0.5-point increase in the MIND score and were (95% CI: , ) and (95% CI: , ) lower, respectively, with each interquartile range (IQR) () increase in . The inverse association between per IQR and WMV was stronger () among women with MIND scores below the median (for total WMV, ; 95% CI: , ), but absent in women with scores above the median (; 95% CI: , 3.72), with similar patterns for WMV in the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes. For total cerebral and hippocampus brain volumes or WMV in the corpus callosum, the associations with were not significantly different for women with high MIND scores and women with low MIND scores.

Discussion: In this cohort of U.S. women, exposure was associated with lower MRI-based WMV, an indication of brain aging, only among women whose usual diet was less consistent with the MIND-like dietary pattern at baseline. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP8036.