As populations age, the increasing burden of dementia and chronic age-related conditions highlights the need to promote healthy aging. Simultaneously, more and more people are adopting more plant-based diets, driven by environmental and health concerns. While plant-based diets have been associated with cardiovascular benefits and decreased risk of certain cancers, they may reduce iron and zinc bioavailability, potentially affecting brain and systemic function. Particularly, non-heme iron (present mostly in plants) is less efficiently absorbed and may increase deficiency risk, whereas heme iron (from meat), although more bioavailable, may have adverse effects on cognitive and overall aging. Some evidence suggest also that a low intake of zinc is related to an increased cognitive decline. Understanding how zinc and iron intake, their bioavailability, and status relate to brain and overall aging is therefore critical. No study to date has investigated these links in the context of sustainable diets, integrating minerals bioavailability, dietary cofactors, biomarkers and metabolomics.
This project aims to investigate the links between dietary iron and zinc and aging outcomes (both systemic and brain-specific).
Three specific aims are defined:
– Estimate iron and zinc bioavailability influenced by dietary cofactors, and their associations with plant-based dietary patterns. Liver iron content and blood biomarkers will be used as surrogate of body iron status.
– Assess relationships with cognitive performance, MRI markers, dementia incidence, and broader indicators of healthy aging (e.g. biological aging, absence of comorbidities, etc…).
– Explore biological pathways using biomarkers and metabolomics data
By integrating dietary, biological, neuroimaging and health data, this project will yield novel insights into how iron and zinc bioavailability shapes aging trajectories and inform nutritional strategies for healthy aging.