Dietary and lifestyle habits in patients with hypertriglyceridemia referred to a Danish lipid clinic: A retrospective cross-sectional and follow-up study

Background and aims Dietary and lifestyle counseling represent the cornerstone of treatment of hypertriglyceridemia, but limited knowledge exists on the dietary habits among patients with severe and extremely elevated plasma triglycerides. In this study we describe dietary habits in patients with moderate, severe or extreme hypertriglyceridemia referred to a lipid clinic. Furthermore, we present changes in plasma triglycerides levels achieved one year after dietary and lifestyle counseling and lipid-lowering medications in patients with hypertriglyceridemia. Methods This study utilized a retrospective cross-sectional and follow-up design, where data were collected from patients referred to the lipid clinic in the Northern Denmark region between September 1st 2016 and August 31st 2020. Information on diet was collected from a validated dietary questionnaire, while information on clinical characteristics was retrieved from medical records. We used logistic regression to investigate associations between dietary scores and severe to extreme hypertriglyceridemia, while a paired t-test was used to examine changes in plasma triglycerides one year after the initial assessment. Results We identified a total of 634 patients with plasma triglycerides above 1.7 mmol/L including 83.9% with moderate hyperglyceridemia, 12.1% with severe hypertriglyceridemia, and 3.9% with extreme hypertriglyceridemia. Higher dietary scores reflecting adherence to a healthy diet were associated with a modest lower occurrence of severe to extreme hypertriglyceridemia, but the associations were not statistically significant. However, we found that patients with extreme hypertriglyceridemia had average statistically significantly lower plasma triglycerides of 6 mmol/L one year after the initial assessment, while no major differences were found among subjects with modest and severe hypertriglyceridemia. Conclusion We found that higher dietary scores reflecting adherence to a healthy diet was associated with a statistically non-significant lower risk of severe-to-extreme HTG. Furthermore, in patients with extreme HTG we observed significant reduction in triglycerides one year after dietary counseling.