Comparison of fatty acid profile in plasma phospholipids in women from Granada (southern Spain) and Malmö (southern Sweden).

We conducted a first pilot study on healthy women living in two countries with different dietary habits, Granada in the south of Spain and Malmö in the south of Sweden, in order to compare their levels of plasma phospholipid fatty acids, and to examine the relationship between the differences in food consumption. This study is part of a pilot study which is nested in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, a multi-centre prospective cohort study on diet, plasma concentrations of antioxidants and fatty acids, and markers of oxidative stress. Thirty-nine women in Granada and thirty-eight women in Malmö, aged 45-50 years (all pre-menopausal) were selected among the female participants in the cohorts from these two countries. Individual measurements of the women's habitual diet were obtained by a food frequency questionnaire. 24-hour diet recalls were used for the standardised measurement of diet at group level. Plasma phospholipid fatty acid composition was determined by capillary gas chromatography. We found a different fatty acid profile in plasma between the two populations, with higher mean levels of palmitic acid (16:0), palmitoleic acid (16:1) (n-7), oleic acid (18:1), alpha-linolenic acid (18:3) (n-3) and eicosapentaenoic acid (20:5) (n-3), and lower mean levels of stearic acid (18:0) in Malmö compared to Granada. Women in Malmö consumed more meat, alcoholic beverages and sugar, and less fish and shellfish than women in Granada. We conclude that the fatty acid composition in plasma phospholipids is different between women from the two European centres. For polyunsaturated fatty acids, differences were observed for (n-3) fatty acids. In relation to these differences, we observed that specific food intakes, particularly meat and fish, varied between the two centres.