The impact of Mediterranean diet and vitamin D supplementation on adults at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes: a randomised parallel study

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is the most prevalent chronic medical condition and a critical public health concern for all nations. Only in 2012, in the United Kingdom 2.9 million people were diagnosed with diabetes, and this number is expect to rise to 5 million by the year 2025. Despite the fact that some diabetes-related risk factors are non-modifiable, it was estimated that 89% of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes had at least one risk factor which could have been modified by diet or physical activity. These lifestyle modifications might help those patients at high risk to reduce their likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes by 28% to 59%. There is a growing body of research indicating that Mediterranean diet, as well as Vitamin D, might help to prevent from developing type 2 diabetes. Despite this, no research has been conducted to investigate the combined effect of Mediterranean diet and vitamin D supplementation in adults at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This study will be carried out as a randomised controlled parallel study with factorial design with 4 groups and 48 weeks of follow-up. The research will take place at the Western General Hospital, in Edinburgh, Scotland, for a duration of 27 months. The research will evaluate the effectiveness of Mediterranean diet and vitamin D3, both alone and together, on diabetes-related risk factors such as BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, insulin sensitivity, and fasting plasma glucose, in a population at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The results will be analysed and interpreted statistically every 12 weeks and at the end of the trial to investigate the differences between and within groups. To our knowledge this is the first attempt at studying the potential reduction of diabetes risk factors as a result of a combination of MedDiet and VitD3 supplementation. The results of our study could be compared to existing research on dietary or VitD approaches for diabetes prevention, in order to suggest and implement a new way for effective type 2 diabetes prevention