Meat-Heavy Diet May Raise Older Women's Heart Risk

MONDAY, Nov. 14, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Women over 50 who follow a high-protein diet could have a higher risk for heart failure, especially if most of their protein comes from meat, researchers report.

The study couldn't prove cause-and-effect. However, postmenopausal women with the most protein in their diet had a 60 percent increased risk of heart failure, compared with women who ate little protein, the study found.

The findings were presented Monday at the American Heart Association annual meeting in New Orleans.

Most of the risk appears to come from animal protein, said study author Dr. Mohamad Firas Barbour. He's an internist at Brown University's Alpert Medical School and Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island in Pawtucket.

Women who got most of their protein from vegetable sources appeared to have a nearly 20 percent reduced risk of heart failure, Barbour said.

"The higher total dietary protein intake, that will increase the risk of heart failure, but higher vegetable protein intake appeared to be protective against heart failure," Barbour said.

Beans, nuts, lentils and quinoa are some non-meat sources of protein.

Heart failure occurs when the heart can no longer pump enough blood to fill the body's needs, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. More than 5 million people in the United States suffer from heart failure, and it is the most common reason older people are hospitalized.

For this study, Barbour and colleagues analyzed the self-reported daily diets of nearly 104,000 women between 50 and 79 years old, from 1993 to 1998. All subjects are participants in the Women's Health Initiative, an ongoing federally funded diet survey aimed at reducing heart disease, breast and colon cancer, and osteoporosis.

The research team also analyzed urine samples from the women to further assess how much protein they regularly ate, Barbour said. This created a "calibrated" assessment of their protein intake.

More than 1,700 women developed heart failure through 2005. Their odds for the condition was statistically associated with the amount of protein they ate, Barbour and colleagues report.