Dietary intakes consistent with the DASH dietary pattern reduce blood pressure increase with age and risk for stroke in a Chinese population

The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet has been proven to effectively lower blood pressure (BP), and associate with a lower cardiovascular disease and stroke risk in mainly non-Asians. Further, it is unclear if adhering to the DASH target nutrients has similar BP impact as adhering to the recommended DASH food groups. Associations between adherence to DASH foods or nutrients and BP or stroke risk were assessed in 1420 and 2061 Taiwanese adults from 1989 to 2002, respectively. The DASH food score (p=0.053), dairy (p=0.030) and calcium (p=0.020) intake were significantly and inversely associated with follow up systolic BP change in univariate analyses. Both dairy (p=0.020) and calcium (p=0.001) also showed a consistent inverse association with systolic BP change in multivariate analysis. None of the factors examined was associated with diastolic BP change. Both DASH nutrient score and magnesium intakes were significantly associated with the hazard ratio (HR) for total stroke in an inverse relationship. The HR of total stroke comparing the highest to the lowest tertile was 0.63 (95% CI: 0.41-0.98, p=0.037) for the DASH nutrient score, and 0.62 (95% CI: 0.40-0.97, p=0.030) for magnesium intake. Similar findings were observed for DASH nutrient score (p=0.011) and magnesium intake (p=0.043) with the HR for ischemic stroke. The HR for total and ischemic stroke for calcium intake also showed a borderline trend (p=0.071 and 0.051, respectively). In conclusion, adhering to the DASH diet is beneficial for long term BP control and reduction of stroke risk in this Chinese population.