Introduction: Cardiovascular disease is the leading global cause of death. Dietary habits are changing rapidly with alarming rates of obesity. Adherence to the Mediterranean diet and cardiovascular risk are inversely correlated. Prevention of CVD emphasizes, apart from lifestyle changes, the use of drugs. Objective: Describe the relationship between CVD, the MD and CVD drugs intake. Study the differences between men and women in a group of elderly in the Community of Madrid. Methods: Case-control study conformed of 342 subjects. Anthropometric measurements and dietary assessment using the PREDIMED score were obtained. Results: CVD diagnosis and CVD-drugs consumption were higher in women. Besides, higher adherence (in percentage) to MD was observed in men, while higher PREDIMED scores (mean) were registered in women. No statistically significant differences were found when analyzing the dependence between sex, CVD-drugs consumption and CVD presence, and adherence to the MD and the PREDIMED score. Conclusion: CVD diagnosis, drug consumption and PREDIMED score was higher in women, although men showed better adherence to MD. There were no significant differences between cases and control in the analysis of adherence to MD and diagnosis/CVD drug consumption. Growing evidence indicates that MD is beneficial to human health, fact not observed in our sample.
