Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Adolescence is a period of rapid body growth and cognitive development, requiring balanced and sufficient nutrient intake. Since dietary habits are usually acquired in this period and could affect dietary practice in later life. It is crucial for adolescents to acquire healthy dietary behaviors for long-term health. However, the prevalence of diet-related metabolic syndrome risks such as obesity, glucose intolerance, elevated blood pressure, and dyslipidemia is increasing worldwide due to unbalanced nutrient intake among adolescents.

Objectives: The main objective of this study is to assess the association between habitual dietary patterns and the MetS risks after adjustments for biological and lifestyle variables in 112 adolescents aged 14–19 in Albania.

Methods: A validated food frequency questionnaire was used to assess dietary patterns, in which three dietary patterns were identified and labeled as ‘ western –based’, ‘healthy based’ and ‘typical food’ patterns, whereas MetS risks was determined using multiple indicators such as waist circumference (WC), systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP), and fasting glucose, triglycerides and HDL cholesterol levels. The outcome variables were statistically normalized and expressed as z-scores. A MetS risk score was computed as the means of these z scores.

Results: Multivariate analyses show that higher intake of western-based diet was significantly associated with the MetS risk scores (P=0.003) and WC (P<0.0001) and BP compared to those at lower intakes of western-based diet, after adjusting for age, gender,ethnicity, pubertal growth status, total physical activity and sedentary screen-based levels. Similar pattern was found in typical-based diet, whereby adolescents who had higher intake of typical-based diet was significantly associated with higher levels of BP (P=0.001) and MetS risk score (P=0.002) compared to those at lower intake group. In contrast, high intake of ‘healthy’ diet pattern was significantly associated with lower WC (P<0.0001), BP (P=0.022) and MetS risk scores (P<0.001) than those at lower health diet pattern.

Conclusion: These findings suggest that high intake of ‘healthy’ diet that is high in dairy foods, legumes, fruits and vegetables and low-intake of western-based diet and typical based diet were significantly associated with lower risks of abdominal obesity and MetS among adolescents. Hence, effective dietary intervention strategies should emphasize the promotion of healthy dietary practices among adolescents during these critical years of growth in order to prevent the risk of excessive weight gain and metabolic-related disorders.