ArticleFrontiers in nutrition2021
Negative Association Between Mediterranean Diet Adherence and COVID-19 Cases and Related Deaths in Spain and 23 OECD Countries: An Ecological Study.
Article in Frontiers in nutrition, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 42 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
42 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 75 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effect of adherence to high-quality dietary pattern on COVID-19 outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of medical virology · 2023Pooled it
- Adherence to the Mediterranean diet, particularly olive oil intake, and metabolic health parameters are independently associated with SARS-CoV-2 vaccine-induced IgG responses.Metabolism open · 2026Article
- The Impact of Diet Quality on COVID-19 Severity and Outcomes-A Scoping Review.Current nutrition reports · 2025Article
- Article
- The Link between Inflammation, Lipid Derivatives, and Microbiota Metabolites in COVID-19 Patients: Implications on Eating Behaviors and Nutritional Status.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Observational
- Gut microbiota in post-acute COVID-19 syndrome: not the end of the story.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Review
- Association of major dietary patterns with socioeconomic status, obesity, and contracting COVID-19 among Iranian adults.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Article
- Mediterranean diet improves blastocyst formation in women previously infected COVID-19: a prospective cohort study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Article
- Comparative analysis of COVID-19 responses in Japan and Africa: diet, phytochemicals, vitamin D, and gut microbiota in reducing mortality-A systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in nutrition · 2024Article
- Article
- Potential usefulness of Mediterranean diet polyphenols against COVID-19-induced inflammation: a review of the current knowledge.Journal of physiology and biochemistry · 2023Review
- Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet Association with Serum Inflammatory Factors Stress Oxidative and Appetite in COVID-19 Patients.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2023Article
- Review
- COVID-19: Reducing the risk via diet and lifestyle.Journal of integrative medicine · 2023Review
- Long-term diet and risk of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) severity.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2022Article
- Dietary, comorbidity, and geo-economic data fusion for explainable COVID-19 mortality prediction.Expert systems with applications · 2022Article
- Inflammation in COVID-19 and the Effects of Non-Pharmacological Interventions during the Pandemic: A Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- Article
- Assessment of Mediterranean Diet Adherence and Lifestyle Change during COVID-19 National Lockdown in Tunisian Adult Population.Nutrients · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In December 2019, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov2) emerged in Wuhan, China, sparking the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The high prevalence of nutrition-related COVID-19 risk factors including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension, suggests that healthy dietary approaches may mitigate COVID-19 related outcomes and possibly SARS-CoV-2 infection. Based on the fundamental role of nutrition in immune function and the well-documented association between Mediterranean diet consumption and risk reduction for chronic diseases that are comorbidities in COVID-19 patients, we hypothesized that there would be a relationship between Mediterranean diet adherence and COVID-19 cases and related deaths. In this perspective, we examined the association between regional adherence to a Mediterranean diet and COVID-19 cases and deaths using an ecological study design. We observed that Mediterranean diet adherence was negatively associated with both COVID-19 cases and related deaths across 17 regions in Spain and that the relationship remained when adjusted for factors of well-being. We also observed a negative association between Mediterranean diet adherence and COVID-19 related deaths across 23 countries when adjusted for factors of well-being and physical inactivity. The anti-inflammatory properties of the Mediterranean diet - likely due to the polyphenol content of the diet - may be a biological basis to explain our findings. However, there are confounding factors unrelated to dietary factors driving COVID-19 cases and related deaths across the regions in Spain and the 23 countries examined in our analysis. Our findings will need to be confirmed and further explored in cohort studies.
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