Figure 2. Associations of linoleic acid (LA; 18:2n6) with total CVD (A) and CVD mortality (B) in pooled analysis of 30 prospective studies.

Study-specific estimates for hazard ratio (HR) per interquintile range (i.e., range between the midpoint of the bottom quintile [10^th percentile] and the top quintile [90^th percentile]) of biomarker linoleic acid were pooled based on the following order: 1) adipose tissue, 2) erythrocyte phospholipid, 3) plasma phospholipid 4) cholesterol ester, and 5) total plasma. Study weights are indicated (grey squares) by individual biomarker compartment and overall. Study-specific analyses were conducted using models that included the following covariates: age (years), sex (male/female), race (Caucasian/non-Caucasian, or study-specific), field center if applicable (categories), body-mass index (BMI, kg/m²), education (less than high school graduate, high school graduate, some college or vocational school, college graduate), smoking (current, former, never; if history not assessed, then current/not current), physical activity (quintiles of metabolic equivalents (METs)/week), alcohol intake (none, 1–6 drinks/week, 1–2 drinks/day, >2 drinks/day), prevalent diabetes mellitus (defined as treatment with oral antihyperglycemic agents, insulin, or fasting plasma glucose >126 mg/dL), treated hypertension (defined as hypertension drug use; or if unavailable, as diagnosed/history of hypertension), treated hypercholesterolemia (defined as LDL-lowering drug use; if unavailable, as diagnosed/history of hypercholesterolemia), regular aspirin use (defined as ≥2 times/week), levels of α-linolenic acid (ALA; 18:3n-3), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 20:5n-3), sum of trans isomers of oleic acid (trans18:1), and sum of trans isomers of LA (trans-18:2) (each expressed as % total FAs). If data did not allow such categorization, study-specific categories were used. See Table 1 footnote for abbreviations of cohorts.