Healthy Nordic diet and risk of disease death among men: the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study.

PURPOSE: To investigate the association between healthy Nordic diet and risk of disease death in middle-aged and older men from eastern Finland. METHODS: A total of 1547 men aged 42-60 years and free of cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer and type 2 diabetes at baseline in 1984-1989 were included. Diet was assessed with 4-day food records at baseline and the healthy Nordic diet score was calculated based on the Baltic Sea Diet Score. The incidence of death was assessed by a computer linkage to the national cause of death register. Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were used to estimate the associations between the healthy Nordic diet score and mortality. RESULTS: During the mean follow-up of 23.6 years (SD 7.0), 576 men died due to disease: 250 due to CVD, 194 due to cancer and 132 due to other diseases. The multivariable-adjusted hazard ratios (95% confidence interval) in the lowest vs. the highest quartile of the healthy Nordic diet score were 1.27 (1.01-1.59) for any disease death (P-trend across quartiles < 0.001), 1.39 (0.99-1.97, P-trend = 0.049) for CVD death, 1.26 (0.84-1.89, P-trend = 0.316) for cancer death and 1.04 (0.65-1.68, P-trend = 0.563) for other disease deaths. CONCLUSIONS: In this prospective population-based cohort study among middle-aged and older men, low adherence to a healthy Nordic diet was associated with a higher risk of any disease death, possibly largely attributable to higher CVD mortality.

BP180 Autoantibodies Target Different Epitopes in Multiple Sclerosis or Alzheimer's Disease than in Bullous Pemphigoid.

Neurologic patients have an increased risk for bullous pemphigoid (BP), in which autoantibodies target BP180, a cutaneous basement membrane protein also expressed in the brain. Here we show that 53.6% of sera from patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) (n = 56) had IgG reactivity against full-length BP180 in immunoblotting, while in BP180 non-collagenous 16A ELISA (n = 143), only 7.7% of MS samples studied were positive. Epitope mapping with 13 fusion proteins covering the entire BP180 polypeptide revealed that in MS and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, IgG autoantibodies target regions located in the intracellular and mid-extracellular parts of BP180, but not the well-known BP epitopes located in the non-collagenous 16A domain and the distal part of extracellular domain. In indirect immunofluorescence analysis, 8.1% of MS sera recognized the cutaneous basement membrane and in full-length BP180 ELISA analysis, 7.5% MS and AD sera were positive, indicating that these autoantibodies rarely recognize BP180 in its native conformation. Thus, in MS and AD patients, BP180 autoantibodies have a different epitope profile than in patients with BP, and seldom bind to native BP180. This explains the inability of these autoantibodies to cause skin symptoms. Our results suggest that the autoantibodies against BP180 alone are not sufficient to induce BP in MS and AD patients.