WEDNESDAY, Nov. 20, 2013 (HealthDay News) -- Those who consume nuts have a lower risk of total and cause-specific mortality, according to research published in the Nov. 21 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Ying Bao, M.D., Sc.D., of Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues examined data from 3,038,853 person-years of follow-up for women in the Nurses' Health Study and men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study to assess the association between nut consumption and mortality.
The researchers found an inverse association between nut consumption and total mortality for women and men. Pooled multivariate hazard ratios showed significantly reduced risk of death for participants who ate nuts less than once per week (0.93), once per week (0.89), two to four times per week (0.87), five or six times per week (0.85), and seven or more times per week (0.80), compared with those who did not eat nuts. Those who ate nuts also had significantly reduced risk of death due to cancer, heart disease, and respiratory disease.
"In two large prospective U.S. cohorts, we found a significant, dose-dependent inverse association between nut consumption and total mortality, after adjusting for potential confounders," the authors write.
A grant from the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation partly funded the study.
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