Associations between saturated fat intake and other dietary macronutrients and incident hypertension in a prospective study of French women

Purpose: Saturated fat has long been associated with cardiovascular disease in multiple prospective studies, and randomized controlled trials. Few studies have assessed the relative associations between saturated fat and other macronutrients with hypertension, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The aim of this study was to assess the relative associations between saturated fat, other macronutrients such as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat, proteins, and carbohydrates, and incident hypertension in a large prospective cohort of French women.

Methods: This study used data from the E3N cohort study, including participants free of hypertension at baseline. A food frequency questionnaire was used to determine dietary intakes of saturated fat (SFA), monounsaturated fat (MUFA), polyunsaturated fat (PUFA), animal protein (AP), vegetable protein (VP), carbohydrates (CH) and various foods. Cases of hypertension were based on self-report, validated by drug reimbursement data. Covariates were based on self-report. Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate the relative associations between different macronutrients and hypertension risk, using the 'substitution' framework. Bootstrapping was used to generate 95% confidence intervals.

Results: This study included 45,854 women free of hypertension at baseline. During 708,887 person-years of follow-up, 12,338 incident cases of hypertension were identified. Compared to saturated fat, higher consumption of all other macronutrients was associated with a lower risk of hypertension (HR_MUFA = 0.74 [0.67: 0.81], HR_PUFA = 0.84 [0.77: 0.92], HR_CH = 0.83 [0.77: 0.88], HR_AP = 0.91 [0.85: 0.97], HR_VP = 0.93 [0.83: 1.03]).

Conclusion: This study finds that relative to other macronutrients such as monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fat, higher intake of saturated fat is associated with a higher risk of hypertension among women.