Consensus statement on exploring the Nexus between nutrition, brain health and dementia prevention

Abstract

An international expert panel convened to evaluate nutrition-based approaches to brain health and dementia prevention. This consensus statement integrates perspectives from lived experiences, mechanistic evidence, epidemiology, and clinical interventions. Nutrition plays a crucial role in brain health throughout life and in cognitive decline pathogenesis, particularly through the food-gut-brain axis. Intervention effectiveness varies across the health promotion, prevention, treatment, and maintenance spectrum due to methodological differences and individual responses to nutritional interventions.The Mediterranean and MIND dietary patterns show promise for maintaining cognitive function across studies. Multi-domain interventions like FINGER effectively combine dietary modifications with lifestyle changes to delay dementia onset in at-risk older adults. These findings align with mechanistic evidence on the food-gut-brain axis in maintaining optimal brain health by preventing neurodegeneration. Key mechanisms include gut microbiota composition and function, blood-brain barrier integrity, endothelial and mitochondrial dysfunction, insulin resistance, oxidative stress, and inflammatory processes.Research priorities include standardizing cognitive assessment methodologies, developing early intervention strategies, and implementing integrated precision nutrition and lifestyle approaches. Incorporating patients' and caregivers' lived experiences in research co-production was identified as essential to support those with lived experience. The panel concluded that future directions should combine population and individual-level preventive approaches while addressing challenges in sustaining healthy behavioral changes and understanding the complex interplay between diet, lifestyle, and genetic factors in brain health and dementia prevention. Experts emphasized the need for both standardized methodologies and personalized interventions to account for individual variability in nutritional responses and facilitate effective prevention strategies across diverse populations.

Keywords: Ageing; Brain health; Co-production; Dementia prevention; Diet; Mechanisms; Nutrition.

Fig. 1

Mechanistic diagram linking nutritional and dietary factors to brain health

Fig. 2

Outcomes from the co-create session