**2. Material and methods**

We examined 4 groups:


© 2012 Socha and Borawska, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2012 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Food-frequency questionnaires were implemented to collect the dietary data. The patients with aneurysms were asked to complete the questionnaire concerning the consumption frequency of food product and smoking by the National Food and Nutrition Institute and the National Cardiology Institute [10]. 28 patients with CA, due to poor health were disclosed from nutritional information collecting. The list of food commodities consisted of 36 food items (white bread, wholegrain bread, sweets, cereal products, grain products, pulses, milk, cottage cheese, other sorts of cheese, meat, poultry, offal, sausages, ham, meat products, bacon, tinned meat, tinned fish, fresh fish, eggs, butter, margarine, vegetable oils, potatoes, processed vegetables, fresh vegetables, fruit, sugar added to beverages, marmalade, honey, soft drinks, beer, wine, vodka, coffee, tea). The consumption frequency of different kind of food was estimated according to the following criteria: frequent consumption was defined as an intake of certain food products twelve to thirty days per month, except fish, that was eaten four to twelve a month. Food products eaten less frequently were classified into "sporadic consumption" group.

The concentration of mineral components in deproteinated blood and tissues, after microwave mineralization in concentrated nitric acid, was analyzed by flame (Mg, Zn) and electrothermal (Cu, Se, Pb, Cd) atomic absorption spectrometry method with Zeeman-effect background correction on Z-5000 and Z-2000 instrument (Hitachi). Certified reference materials: Seronorm – human serum and whole blood, BCR184 – bovine muscle were used to test the accuracy of this methods. The results of the quality control analyses were in agreement with reference values. The Department of Bromatology participates in a quality control program of the estimation of trace elements of the National Institute of Public Health and Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and Technology.

Statistical analyses were performed using Statistica v. 9.1 software. Differences between independent groups were tested by the Mann-Whitney U-test. The correlations were calculated and tested by the Spearman rank test. For estimation the influence of dietary habits on content of mineral components in the examined patients we have used multiple linear regression analysis. Values of p<0.05 were considered to be significantly different.
