Alice H Lichtenstein

Alice H Lichtenstein
Tufts University | Tufts · Cardiovascular Nutrition Research Laboratory

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692
Publications
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Publications

Publications (692)
Article
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Avocado consumption significantly increases gut microbiome diversity, with the potential benefits being more pronounced in individuals with a low diet quality score.
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Diet is a potentially modifiable neurodegenerative disease risk factor. We studied the effects of a typical Western diet (WD; high in refined carbohydrates, cholesterol and saturated fat), relative to a heart-healthy diet (HHD; high in unrefined carbohydrates, polyunsaturated fat and fiber, and low in cholesterol) on brain microvessel transcriptomi...
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Objectives The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet reduces blood pressure, but the mechanisms underlying DASH diet-blood pressure relations are not well understood. Proteomic measures may provide insights into the pathophysiological mechanisms through which the DASH diet reduces blood pressure. Methods The DASH (1994–1996) and DASH...
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Background: Total fasting non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA) levels have been associated with total and cause-specific mortality in older adults, but the corresponding associations with NEFA levels following the metabolic challenge of an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) and with individual fasting NEFA species have not been quantified Methods: We s...
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Objective Inflammation worsens joint destruction in osteoarthritis (OA) and aggravates pain. Although n‐3 fatty acids reduce inflammation, different n‐3 fatty acids have different effects on inflammation and clinical outcomes, with eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) having the strongest effect. We examined whether specific essential fatty acid levels affe...
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Background Few clinical trials have evaluated diet quality change as a predictor of intervention effectiveness. Objectives The aim of this study was to examine changes in the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2015 after a food-based intervention, and assess the associations between HEI-2015 change and intervention effects on cardiometabolic risk–related...
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Unhealthy diets are a major impediment to achieving a healthier population in the United States. Although there is a relatively clear sense of what constitutes a healthy diet, most of the US population does not eat healthy food at rates consistent with the recommended clinical guidelines. An abundance of barriers, including food and nutrition insec...
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Background: Childhood overweight/obesity has been associated with an elevated risk of insulin resistance and cardiometabolic disorders. Waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) may be a simple screening tool to quickly identify children at elevated risk for cardiometabolic disorders. The primary objective of the present study was to create sex-specific tertil...
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Background Within healthy dietary patterns, manipulation of the proportion of macronutrient can reduce CVD risk. However, the biological pathways underlying healthy diet-disease associations are poorly understood. Using an untargeted, large-scale proteomic profiling, we aimed to (1) identify proteins mediating the association between healthy dietar...
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BACKGROUND The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diets reduced blood pressure (BP) in the DASH and DASH-Sodium trials, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. We identified metabolites associated with systolic BP or diastolic BP (DBP) changes induced by dietary interventions (DASH versus control arms) in 2 randomized controlled feed...
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Background The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet is recommended for cardiovascular disease prevention. We aimed to identify protein biomarkers of the DASH diet using data from 2 randomized feeding studies and validate them in an observational study, the ARIC (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities) study. Methods and Results Large‐s...
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Partially-hydrogenated fat/trans fatty acid intake has been associated with adverse effects on cardiometabolic risk factors. Comparatively unexplored is the effect of unmodified oil relative to partially-hydrogenated fat on the plasma metabolite profile and lipid-related pathways. To address this gap, we conducted secondary analyses using a subset...
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Introduction: The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet significantly reduced blood pressure (BP) in the DASH and DASH-Sodium trials, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Hypothesis: We hypothesized that certain metabolites will be associated with BP reductions. Methods: Metabolomic profiling was conducted at the end of the diet...
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Background: Understanding the genetic contribution to food choices and intake is critical for the development of effective precision nutrition guidance. Recent findings by our lab suggest that genetic variants (SNPs) related to bitter and umami taste perception are differentially associated with food group intakes. The aim of this study was to exam...
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Objective: Dietary stearic acid (18:0), a major saturated fatty acid (SFA) in Western diets, does not raise plasma LDL-C concentrations relative to other shorter chain SFAs (palmitic [16:0], myristic [14:0] and lauric [12:0]), and is associated with lower CVD risk. We investigated whether the cardioprotective effects of 18:0 and its metabolic produ...
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Background: As suboptimal diet quality remains the leading modifiable contributor to chronic disease risk, it is important to better understand the individual-level drivers of food choices. Recently, a genetic component of food choices was proposed based on variants (SNPs) in genes related to taste perception (taste-related SNPs). Objectives: Th...
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Background: Molecular mechanisms underlying the benefits of healthy dietary patterns are poorly understood. Identifying protein biomarkers of dietary patterns can contribute to characterizing biological pathways influenced by food intake. Objectives: This study aimed to identify protein biomarkers associated with four indexes of healthy dietary...
Preprint
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Background Higher childhood overweight/obesity has been associated with an elevated risk of insulin resistance and cardiometabolic disorders. Waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) may be a simple screening tool to identify children at risk for cardiometabolic associated obesity. This study investigated whether being in the upper tertile for WHtR predicted t...
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Introduction: Higher intake of fiber has been associated with lower risk of incident symptomatic osteoarthritis (OA). We examined whether levels of alkylresorcinol (AR), a marker of whole grain intake, were associated with OA in subjects in The Multicenter Osteoarthritis (MOST) Study. Method: Knee x-rays and knee pain were assessed at baseline a...
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Background We sought to determine the associations between individual nonesterified fatty acids (NEFAs) and disability and mobility limitation. Methods We studied 1 734 participants in the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), an ongoing population-based cohort study of community-living older American adults. We measured 35 individual NEFA species in...
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Background Prospective cohort studies have found a relation between sugar-sweetened beverage consumption (SSB; sodas and fruit drinks) and dyslipidemia. There is limited evidence linking SSB consumption to emerging features of dyslipidemia, which can be characterized by variation in lipoprotein particle size, remnant-like particle (RLP), and apolip...
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Background Excess visceral adiposity is associated with increased risk of cardiometabolic disorders. Short‐term well‐controlled clinical trials suggest that regular avocado consumption favorably affects body weight, visceral adiposity, and satiety. Methods and Results The HAT Trial (Habitual Diet and Avocado Trial) was a multicenter, randomized, c...
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Food intake data collected using subjective tools are prone to inaccuracies and biases. An objective assessment of food intake, such as metabolomic profiling, may offer a more accurate method if unique metabolites can be identified. To explore this option, we used samples generated from a randomized and controlled cross-over trial during which part...
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Objectives Understanding the individual-level drivers of food choices is critical for designing personalized nutrition guidance. Taste perception is one factor, yet the effects of genetic variants (SNPs) related to taste perception on diet quality and cardiometabolic risk factors (CRFs) are unknown. Thus, our aims were to determine the associations...
Article
To examine the associations between bone mineral density (BMD), body composition and habitual physical activity in women who are overweight/obese. We measured whole-body bone, and body composition (lean mass, fat mass, and total fat percent) via dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (model General Electric Lunar whole-body scanner) in a diverse group of...
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Subjective reporting of food intake can be unreliable. No objective method is available to distinguish between diets differing in protein type. To address this gap, a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled cross-over feeding trial was conducted. Assessed were fasting plasma metabolite profiles and their associations with cardiometabolic risk...
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Scope: Lack of biomarkers is a challenge for the accurate assessment of protein intake and interpretation of observational study data. We aimed to identify biomarkers of a protein-rich dietary pattern. Methods and results: The OmniHeart trial was a randomized cross-over feeding study which tested three dietary patterns with varied macronutrient...
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Objective Studies suggest an association between elevated total serum cholesterol, particularly low‐density lipoprotein (LDL), and osteoarthritis (OA). The present study was undertaken to evaluate the association between total cholesterol, LDL, and high‐density lipoprotein (HDL) and risk of knee OA. Methods We studied participants from the Multice...
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Taste perception is a primary driver of food choices; however, little is known about how perception of all five tastes (sweet, salt, sour, bitter, umami) collectively inform dietary patterns. Our aim was to examine the associations between a multivariable measure of taste perception—taste perception profiles—and empirically derived dietary patterns...
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Background Parental involvement has been shown to favorably affect childhood weight management interventions, but whether these interventions influence parental diet and cardiometabolic health outcomes is unclear. Objective To evaluate whether a 1-year family-based childhood weight management intervention altered parental nutrient biomarker concen...
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Sexual dimorphism in the immune system is evidenced by a higher prevalence of autoimmune diseases in women and higher susceptibility to infectious diseases in men. However, the molecular basis of these sex-based differences is not fully understood. We have characterized the transcriptome profiles of peripheral blood monocytes from males and postmen...
Article
Introduction: Children are at elevated risk for developing obesity/cardiometabolic abnormalities when their parents have these conditions. Little is known about diet quality and subsequent impact on cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRFs) in child-parent dyads. Objective: To determine the concordance between nutrient biomarkers and CMRF changes in chi...
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Background Significant associations between total nonesterified fatty acid (NEFA) concentrations and incident stroke have been reported in some prospective cohort studies. We evaluated the associations between incident stroke and serum concentrations of nonesterified saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and trans fatty acids. Methods and R...
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Poor diet quality is strongly associated with elevated risk of cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality. This scientific statement emphasizes the importance of dietary patterns beyond individual foods or nutrients, underscores the critical role of nutrition early in life, presents elements of heart-healthy dietary patterns, and highlights str...
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Engagement in healthy lifestyle behaviors is suboptimal. The vast majority of the US population does not meet current recommendations. A healthy lifestyle is defined by consuming a healthy dietary pattern, engaging in regular physical activity, avoiding exposure to tobacco products, habitually attaining adequate amounts of sleep, and managing stres...
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Excess visceral adiposity is associated with increased risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. In the U.S. approximately 60% of adults have visceral obesity. Despite high calorie and fat, small, well-controlled clinical studies suggest that avocado consumption has favorable effects on body weight and visceral adiposity. Additionally, short-ter...
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Backgrounds and aims: Elevated common carotid artery intima-media thickness (carotid IMT) and diminished flow-mediated dilation (FMD) are early subclinical indicators of atherosclerosis. Serum total non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA) concentrations have been positively associated with subclinical atherosclerosis. The relations between individual NEFA...
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Background: Lifestyle interventions are the first-line treatment for obesity, but participant weight loss is typically low. Objectives: We evaluated the efficacy of an alternative lifestyle intervention [Healthy Weight for Living (HWL)] compared with a modified Diabetes Prevention Program (m-DPP). HWL was based on a revised health behavior chang...
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Background - Carbohydrate responsive element binding protein (ChREBP) is a transcription factor that responds to sugar consumption. Sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption and genetic variants in the CHREBP locus have separately been linked to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and triglyceride (TG) concentrations. We hypothesized SSB...
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Background Greater whole grain (WG) consumption is associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD); however, few prospective studies have examined WG or refined grain (RG) intake and intermediate cardiometabolic risk factors. Objectives We examined the longitudinal association between WG and RG intake on changes in waist circumference...
Article
Background The Paleo diet is a popular dietary pattern based on interpretation of evolutionary diets. Objective The aim of this study was to assess the relative dietary quality of theoretical, modern-day Paleo meal plans, in comparison with national nutrition guidance. Methods This analysis used data from the Adhering to Dietary Approaches for Pe...
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Background: Healthy dietary patterns are related to better cognitive health in aging populations. While levels of individual nutrients in neural tissues are individually associated with cognitive function, the investigation of nutrient patterns in human brain tissue has not been conducted. Methods: Brain tissues were acquired from frontal and tempo...
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Background The risk of stroke in individuals with very low low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) concentrations remains high. We sought to prioritize predictive risk factors for stroke in Chinese participants with LDL-C concentrations < 70 mg/dL using a survival conditional inference tree, a machine learning method. Methods The training data...
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Background Current approaches to studying relations between taste perception and diet quality typically consider each taste—sweet, salt, sour, bitter, umami—separately or aggregately, as total taste scores. Consistent with studying dietary patterns rather than single foods or total energy, an additional approach may be to study all 5 tastes collect...
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Objectives To understand how eating behaviors, susceptibility to the food environment, and perceived dietary habit strength differ across self-reported categories of adherence. Methods We used data in a sample (n = 2829) from Adhering to Dietary Approaches for Personal Taste (ADAPT), an online study conducted in self-identified popular diet follow...
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Objectives Carotid artery intima-media thickness (CIMT) has been used as an early indicator of subclinical atherosclerosis. Multiple studies have identified significant associations between plasma total non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA) concentrations and risk factors associated with subclinical atherosclerosis. However, the relationship between CIM...
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Objectives To evaluate the impact of a family-based weight management intervention for children with overweight/obesity on parental nutrient biomarker concentrations and cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRF). Methods Secondary analysis from a randomized-controlled, parallel-arm clinical trial. Families were recruited from a largely Hispanic populati...
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Objectives To assess self-reported differences in food purchasing habits and diet-consistent food availability among recent vs. long-term plant-based diet (PBD) followers compared to those who are not actively following a specific diet but report “trying to eat healthy” (TTEH). Methods The sample consisted of PBD (n = 1820, whole-food plant based/...
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Objectives To evaluate the nutrient adequacy of theoretical, modern-day Paleo meal plans relative to the U.S. Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs). Methods This analysis used data from the Adhering to Dietary Approaches for Personal Taste (ADAPT) Feasibility Study, which captured data on 9 726 self-reported, popular diet followers. Paleo respondents (...
Article
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Objectives Understanding individual-level drivers of food intake is critical when personalizing dietary guidance. One likely driver is taste perception; yet, limited data relate perception of all 5 tastes (sweet, salt, sour, bitter, umami) to dietary patterns (DPs). Our aim was to determine whether a multivariable measure of taste perception, taste...
Article
To formulate precision nutrition prescriptions, it is essential to understand the relationship between dietary assessment, ethnicity and cardiometabolic disease. Erythrocyte (RBC) fatty acid (FA) profiles reflect long-term dietary fat intake but have not been rigorously compared with short-term FA intake in women of African ancestry who have parado...
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Objective: Evidence suggests perception of sweet, salt, sour, bitter, and umami tastes may be independently related to food preferences and intake. Our objective was to determine whether a collective measure of taste perception for all 5 tastes—“taste perception profiles”—was related to adherence to a Mediterranean diet (MedD). Methods: Participant...
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Background: Experimental studies have found that the functionality of HDL cholesterol may be lost in the presence of diabetes mellitus (DM). Objectives: We aimed to elucidate whether DM modified the association between HDL-cholesterol concentrations and cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes. Methods: Included were 91,354 Chinese adults (8244 p...
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Background: Heart failure (HF) is highly prevalent among older adults and is associated with high costs. Although serum total nonesterified fatty acids (NEFAs) have been positively associated with HF risk, the contribution of each individual NEFA to HF risk has not been examined. Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the association of...
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The long-term impact of carbohydrate quality on abdominal weight gain is not fully understood. We aimed to examine the prospective relation of a carbohydrate quality index (CQI; defined by four criteria: dietary fiber, glycemic index, whole grain-to-total grain ratio, and solid-to-total carbohydrate ratio), total, cereal grain, vegetable, and fruit...
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Background Significant associations have been reported between serum total nonesterified fatty acid (NEFA) concentrations and coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality and incident nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI) in some prospective cohort studies. Little is known about whether individual or subclasses (saturated, polyunsaturated [n‐6 and n‐3], an...
Article
Among elderly participants from the Cardiovascular Health Study, we found that non-esterified trans fatty acid levels had a significant prospective association with hip fracture risk. Other non-esterified fatty acid classes were not associated with hip fracture risk. Introduction: Serum non-esterified fatty acids (NEFAs) are bioactive metabolic i...
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Objective Inflammation worsens joint destruction in osteoarthritis (OA) and aggravates pain. Saturated and n-6 fatty acids (FAs) increase, whereas n-3 FAs reduce inflammation. We examined whether FA levels affected the development of OA. Design We studied participants from the Multicenter Osteoarthritis study (MOST) at risk of developing knee OA....
Article
Full-text available
Background Studies regarding whether light to moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) have generated mixed results. Further, few studies have examined the potential impact of alcohol consumption on diverse disease outcomes simultaneously. We aimed to prospectively study the dose-response associa...
Preprint
Full-text available
Sexual dimorphism in the immune system is evidenced by a higher prevalence of autoimmune diseases in women and higher susceptibility to infectious diseases in men. However, the molecular basis of these sex-based differences is not fully understood. We have characterized the transcriptome profiles of peripheral blood monocytes from males and postmen...
Article
Objective Obesity and dysmetabolism are major risk factors for atrial fibrillation (AF). Expansion of fat depots is associated with increased circulating total non-esterified fatty acids (NEFAs), elevated levels of which are associated with incident AF. We undertook comprehensive serum measurement of individual NEFA to identify specific association...