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Abstract
Introduction Lifestyle modification is one of the cornerstones in the management of hypertension. According to the most recent guidelines by the American Heart Association, all patients with hypertension should adopt the following dietary advices: increased consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy products and sodium reduction. The aim of the present study is to assess the efficacy of different dietary approaches on systolic and diastolic blood pressure in patients with hypertension and high normal blood pressure in a systematic review including a pairwise and network meta-analysis of randomised trials.
Methods and analysis We conducted searches in Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials in the Cochrane Library, PubMed and Google Scholar until November 2016. Citations, abstracts and relevant papers were screened for eligibility by two reviewers independently. Randomised trials were included if they met the following criteria: (1) hypertension (as mean values ≥140 mm Hg systolic blood pressure and/or ≥90 mm Hg diastolic blood pressure) or high normal blood pressure (mean systolic blood pressure ≥130 mm Hg and/or mean diastolic blood pressure ≥85 mm Hg), (2) age ≥18 years, (3) intervention diets (different type of dietary approaches, eg, dietary approach to stop hypertension diet; Mediterranean diet, vegetarian diet, palaeolithic diet, low sodium diet) either hypocaloric, isocaloric or ad libitum diets, (4) intervention period ≥12 weeks. For each outcome measure of interest, random effects pairwise and network meta-analyses were performed in order to determine the pooled relative effect of each intervention relative to every other intervention in terms of the postintervention values (or change scores). Subgroup analyses were planned for hypertensive status, study length, sample size, age and sex.
Ethics and dissemination As this study is based solely on the published literature, no ethics approval was required. We published our network meta-analysis in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Systematic review registration PROSPERO: CRD42016049243
- diet
- hypertension
- blood pressure
- network meta-analysis
- evidence synthesis
- systematic review
This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Footnotes
Contributors LS, AC, HB and GH contributed to the conception and design of the systematic review and meta-analysis. LS, AC and HB were involved in the acquisition and analysis of the data. LS, AC, CS and HB interpreted the results. LS, AC, GH, CS and HB drafted this protocol. All authors provided critical revisions of the protocol and approved submission of the final manuscript.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.