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Cardiovascular Disease Essay

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D.E Threpleton et al. sought to investigate whether there is an association between dietary fibre intake and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality1. In this prospective cohort study, data was collected from the United Kingdom Women’s Cohort Study (UKWCS). The UKWCS is a cohort of more than 35,000 women founded in 1994. The UKWCS has heterogenous dietary patterns, which is of interest because of the potential properties in preventing disease of some diets.2 In the study, 31,036 women were observed for a median time of 14.3 years, in which 258 fatal CVD cases were counted (130 strokes and 128 Coronary Heart Disease (CHD)). 1 Fibre intake was calculated using two different methods: Non-starch polysaccharide (NSP) and the Association of …show more content…

The linear trend was then tested to find the relationship between the groups being tested. Other epidemiological studies conducted on both sexes have found that fibre is associated with reduced incidence in all CVD events. However, more female only studies need to be conducted since the majority undertaken so far were mixed sex studies. Only after these have been conducted can a conclusion be reached on whether the protective benefits of fibre apply to only males or not. Short term randomised clinical trials (RCT) have shown results suggesting that increased fibre reduces diastolic blood pressure and cholesterol. However, since these trials were only short term, they could not account for CVD events.3,4,6In a systematic review study, it was encouraged to increase fibre intake, since no negative effects of a high fibre diet have been identified.5 Critique In table 1 (Baseline characteristics for fatal stroke, or CHD cases and non-cases), the data is presented in both medians(IQR) and counts (%). Counts seem to be more appropriate. It is unclear why the mean(SD) was not also included in the table. It could be the case that the mean was more appropriate in some instances, with no reason it couldn’t have been added to the table. Table 3 (Total dietary fibre intake, fibre from food sources and cardiovascular mortality risk) is very poorly designed and could be replaced by a more succinct table which displays only the main results (p trend

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