Plant-based diet scores showed differing associations with dementia
Dementia associations varied by diet score, with an uncertain highest-versus-lowest comparison for the healthful score in the cohort analyses.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
Higher overall plant-based diet scores were associated with lower dementia hazard, while higher unhealthful scores were associated with higher hazard. The healthful-score estimate also pointed toward lower hazard, but its confidence interval included no difference. These observational results cannot establish that adopting a particular diet prevents dementia or that individual foods caused the associations.
The abstract does not specify follow-up duration. Abstract-only access limits assessment of how dietary scores and dementia diagnoses were measured across cohorts.
What researchers found
New dementia diagnoses: pooled hazard ratio
The highest overall-score third had 0.70 times the lowest third's rate of new dementia diagnoses during follow-up. This relative hazard does not give absolute dementia probability; follow-up duration was unspecified.
What the scores represent
Researchers calculated separate scores for overall, healthful and unhealthful plant-based eating from food questionnaires. They examined how those scores related to new dementia diagnoses among participants who started without dementia.
Different analyses and uncertainty
The cohort healthful-score comparison remained uncertain despite a statistically significant trend across scores. The separate meta-analysis reported lower dementia risk with healthful scores and higher risk with unhealthful scores.
The original publication
Association between plant-based diets and incident dementia: results from prospective cohort studies and a meta-analysis.
Shen J, Chen H, Gong Y et al.
J Prev Alzheimers Dis · 2026
- PubMed ID
- 41564649
- Record checked
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