The PREDIMED Trial – Controversy, Criticisms, & Lessons Learned (SNP 22)

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About This Episode:

PREDIMED (Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea) is a landmark clinical trial conducted in Spain.

The study made a huge splash due to the rarity in nutrition of having large RCTs with hard endpoints. In addition, it had results of a large magnitude; showing a 30% reduction in cardiovascular events.

But the study did face criticisms and controversies over methodological issues, including randomization procedures at certain centers, ultimately leading to a retraction of the original paper and a re-analysis.

Participants in the PREDIMED trial were randomly assigned to one of three groups:

• A Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil.
• A Mediterranean diet supplemented with mixed nuts (walnuts, almonds, and hazelnuts).
• A control group following a low-fat diet.

Despite the issues it still ends up being an incredibly useful source of data.

In this episode we discuss the findings from PREDIMED, some of the potential limitations, and where it sits among the wider Mediterranean Diet literature.

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