Alternative healthy eating index and risk of hip fracture: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis

Background A high adherence to healthy dietary patterns, such as an alternative healthy eating index (AHEI), has been suggested to have protective effects on bone mineral density and to decrease the incidence of fractures, although the evidence for this is not clear. We conducted a dose-response meta-analysis of available observational studies aiming to assess the association between adherence to a healthy dietary pattern, as assessed by the AHEI score, and risk of hip fracture in the general population. Methods Studies published up to March 2018 were identified on the basis of a literature search in PubMed, Scopus and ISI Web of Science databases using Mesh and non-Mesh relevant keywords. Relative risks (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), the linear and nonlinear relationships were calculated using random-effects models. Results In the meta-analysis of five effect sizes, as obtained from four studies (265 771 participants with 6938 cases of incident hip fracture), we found that a higher AHEI score was associated with a 31% reduced risk of hip fracture (pooled RR = 0.69; 95% CI = 0.52-0.91) in high versus low intake meta-analysis. In addition, there were inverse relationships between AHEI score and risk of hip fracture, such that a five-unit increase in the score of AHEI was associated with a reduction in the risk of hip fracture in linear (pooled RR = 0.97; 95% CI = 0.95-0.99) and nonlinear (Pnonlinearity < 0.001) models, respectively. Conclusions Adherence to the AHEI (as an indicator of diet quality) was associated with a reduced risk of hip fracture.