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Dietary oily fish intake reduces the risk of all-cause mortality in frequent fish consumers of Amerindian ancestry living in coastal Ecuador: the Atahualpa project

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Abstract

Purpose

To assess the relationship between dietary oily fish intake and all-cause mortality in a population of frequent fish consumers of Amerindian ancestry living in rural Ecuador.

Methods

Individuals aged ≥ 40 years enrolled in the prospective population-based Atahualpa Project cohort received annual questionnaires to estimate their dietary oily fish intake. Only fish served broiled or cooked in the soup were included for analysis. Poisson regression and Cox-proportional hazards models adjusted for demographics, education level and cardiovascular risk factors were obtained to estimate mortality risk according to the amount of oily fish intake stratified in tertiles.

Results

Analysis included 909 individuals (mean age: 55.1 ± 12.8 years) followed by a median of 7.5 ± 3 years. Mean oily fish intake was 9.4 ± 5.7 servings per week. A total of 142 (16%) individuals died during the follow-up. The mortality rate for individuals in the first tertile de oily fish intake (0.0–6.29 servings) was 2.87 per 100 person-years, which decreased to 1.78 for those in the third tertile (10.59–35.0 servings). An adjusted Cox-proportional hazards model showed that individuals allocated to the second (HR 0.61; 95% CI 0.41–0.92) and third (HR 0.60; 95% CI 0.40–0.91) tertiles of dietary oily fish intake had significantly lower mortality risk than those in the first tertile.

Conclusion

Sustained oily fish intake of more than six servings per week reduces mortality risk in middle-aged and older adults of Amerindian ancestry.

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Data availability

Aggregated data from this study are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the field personnel of the Atahualpa Project Cohort for their valuable contribution to this study.

Funding

This study was partially supported by an unrestricted grant from Universidad Espiritu Santo-Ecuador, Samborondón, Ecuador.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine and Research Center, Universidad Espíritu Santo-Ecuador, Samborondón, Ecuador

    Oscar H. Del Brutto, Bettsy Y. Recalde & Denisse A. Rumbea

  2. Biostatistics/Epidemiology, Freenome, Inc., South San Francisco, CA, USA

    Robertino M. Mera

  3. Renaissance School of Medicine, Stony Brook University, New York, NY, USA

    Mark J. Sedler

  4. Urbanización Toscana, Apt 3H, Km 4.5 vía Puntilla-Samborondón, 092301, Samborondón, Ecuador

    Oscar H. Del Brutto

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Contributions

OHD: study conceptualization and design; OHD and MJS: wrote the manuscript; RMM: conducted the statistical analysis; BYR: data collection and analysis; DAR: project administration, study coordinator. All authors contributed to the critical review and editing of the manuscript for important intellectual content and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oscar H. Del Brutto.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing conflicts of interest to disclose.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Hospital-Clínica Kennedy, Guayaquil (FWA 00030727). All participants gave signed informed consent, including permission to use their data for research purposes.

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Del Brutto, O.H., Mera, R.M., Recalde, B.Y. et al. Dietary oily fish intake reduces the risk of all-cause mortality in frequent fish consumers of Amerindian ancestry living in coastal Ecuador: the Atahualpa project. Eur J Nutr 62, 1527–1533 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-023-03093-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-023-03093-0

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