Low carb diet increases risk of CVD, cancer and overall mortality: European Heart Journal

Carbohydrates are an important component of a well-balanced diet. However, it has got a bad reputation when it comes to weight gain. Therefore, people are preferring low carbohydrate diet these days in order to lose weight. A new study published in the European Heart Journal has revealed that people on a low carbohydrate diet are at the highest risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), cerebrovascular disease, cancer, and overall mortality.

Scientists on behalf of the International Lipid Expert Panel (ILEP) and the Lipid and Blood Pressure Meta-analysis Collaboration (LBPMC) Group have conducted an analysis of the data on diets from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Multivariable Cox proportional hazards were applied to determine the hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for mortality for each quartile of the LCD score, with the lowest quartile (Q1—with the highest carbohydrates intake) used as a reference. The authors used used adjusted Cox regression to determine the risk ratio (RR) and 95% CI, as well as random effects models and generic inverse variance methods to synthesize quantitative and pooled data, followed by a leave-one-out method for sensitivity analysis.

Key findings

• Overall, 24 825 participants from NHANES study were included (mean follow-up 6.4 years).


• After adjustment, participants with the lowest carbohydrates intake (quartile 4 of LCD) had the highest risk of overall (32%), cardiovascular disease (CVD) (50%), cerebrovascular (51%), and cancer (36%) mortality.


• In the same model, the association between LCD and overall mortality was stronger in the non-obese (48%) than in the obese (19%) participants.


• Findings on pooled data of nine prospective cohort studies with 462 934 participants after an average follow-up 16.1 years, indicated a positive association between LCD and overall, CVD, and cancer mortality.

These findings made the authors conclude "Our study suggests a potentially unfavourable association of low carbohydrate diet with overall and cause-specific mortality, based on both new analyses of an established cohort and by pooling previous cohort studies. Given the nature of the study, causality cannot be proven; we cannot rule out residual bias. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to extend these important findings, which if confirmed, may suggest a need to rethink recommendations for low carb diet in clinical practice."

For more details, click on the link

https://doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehz174