Erratum: Diet Quality Predicts Visceral Adiposity and Liver Fatness: The Multiethnic Cohort Study

Abstract

Introduction: Non-caloric qualitative aspects of diet, such as healthy dietary patterns, may afect visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL), key risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases. This study determined the association of four a priori-defned dietary indexes, i.e., the Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010), Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI-2010), alternate Mediterranean Diet score (aMED), and Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), with dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-derived adiposity measures. Methods: In a prospective design, male and female members of the Mul-tiethnic Cohort (MEC) completed a validated quantitative food frequency questionnaire at cohort entry (1993-95) and at clinic visit (2013-15) when they also underwent whole-body DXA and abdominal MRI scans. Exclusion criteria included smoking, implants, claustrophobia, serious health conditions, substantial weight change, and treatments likely to afect adiposity measures of interest. Linear and logistic regressions adjusted for relevant covariates were performed to estimate associations of dietary indexes with adiposity measures. Results: In this study population of 1,000 African American, Native Ha-waiian, Japanese American, Latino, and white ancestry aged 60-72 years with a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5-40 kg/m2, higher scores of all four indexes were inversely associated with modest diferences in BMI and DXA-derived total adiposity and trunk fat (1-8%) measured 20 years later. However, for VAT and NAFL, the diferences between extreme tertiles were greater by 8-27% (p < 0.001) across indexes. Participants with the highest scores were 32-63% less likely to have NAFL or high VAT (>150 cm2) (p < 0.001). For HEI-2010, participants with high scores at cohort entry and at clinic visit experienced the lowest risk of NAFL and high VAT Conclusions. Tese fndings indicate that high diet quality predicts lower VAT and NAFL and emphasize the need to counsel patients about a high quality diet in addition to maintaining a healthy body weight.