Scoping Review on Associations Between Dietary Intake and Lipid-Lowering Medication Use
This review suggests that there's currently little evidence of a strong connection between diet and the use of lipid-lowering medications.
College of Health researcher(s)
College unit(s)
Abstract
Objectives
A scoping review was conducted to describe the previous observational studies on associations between food, beverage and nutrient intakes and the use of lipid-lowering medication.
Methods
A literature search was conducted using PubMed in July 2023. The retrieved abstracts and full-text articles were reviewed. The relevant information was extracted and summarized.
Results
The literature search yielded 1,257 abstracts, where 90 full-text articles were reviewed and a final selection of 19 articles were included. The combined data from the 19 articles (17 studies) consisted of 145,449 male and female participants from Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States. Further, 11 studies exclusively looked at statins as the lipid-lowering medication, while the other six looked at any kind of lipid-lowering medication. Among dietary variables, 10 studies examined food/food groups, nine examined alcohol, 10 examined macronutrients, six examined total energy, and three examined micronutrients. Among food/food groups, four studies examined fruit intake; three found no statistically significant association, while one found a statistically significant positive association with lipid-lowering medication use. Fish intake had the same pattern of associations as fruit. Four studies examined vegetable intake; three found no association, while one found an inverse association. In nine studies of alcohol, eight reported no significant association with lipid-lowering medication use and one did not report statistical significance. Regarding nutrient intakes, seven studies examined saturated fat intake; five found no association and the remaining two found an inverse association with lipid-lowering medication use. In all five studies that examined monounsaturated fat intake, no association was reported. Polyunsaturated fat had the same pattern of associations as monounsaturated fat intake. For the remaining food, beverage and nutrient intakes, associations with lipid-lowering medication use were assessed in a limited number of studies and null or inconsistent associations were reported.
Conclusions
Overall, relatively few studies reported statistically significant positive or inverse associations of the use of lipid-lowering medication with food, beverage and nutrient intakes, while most studies reported null association.