New peer-reviewed research published in Nature Medicine finds that people at the highest inherited risk for Alzheimer’s disease appear to benefit disproportionately from a Mediterranean-style diet. In an analysis of more than 5,700 men and women tracked for 34 years in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, strict adherence to the plant-forward eating pattern cut the incidence of dementia by about 35 % among individuals carrying two copies of the APOE4 gene. The protective effect was smaller but still significant in participants with one or no APOE4 allele. The investigators, led by Brigham and Women’s Hospital epidemiologist Yuxi Liu, combined genomic, metabolomic and longitudinal dietary data to show that APOE4 homozygotes have distinctive lipid and amino-acid signatures that respond strongly to higher intakes of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, legumes, fish and extra-virgin olive oil. Incorporating metabolomic profiles modestly improved the prediction of dementia beyond age, education and other conventional risk factors, the team reported. Separate papers released this week add to the diet’s public-health relevance. A 25-year JAMA Network cohort that followed more than 25,000 U.S. women linked the Mediterranean diet to a 23 % reduction in all-cause mortality. Meanwhile, the Spanish PREDIMED-Plus randomized trial, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, showed that combining a calorie-restricted Mediterranean diet with exercise and regular counselling lowered six-year absolute risk of type-2 diabetes from 12.0 % to 9.5 %—a 31 % relative decline—in 4,746 overweight adults aged 55–75. Taken together, the findings strengthen the case for using diet as a front-line tool to prevent age-related chronic diseases and underscore the potential of "precision nutrition" for people with known genetic vulnerabilities. Researchers cautioned that the observational nature of the dementia study limits causal inference and called for controlled trials to validate the gene–diet interaction, but said the evidence is now strong enough to recommend a Mediterranean pattern as part of routine preventive care.