Yankun Wang
Yankun Wang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health-Bloomington, Indiana University. His research interests include food insecurity, water insecurity, dietary inflammation, and related health outcomes, especially in low- and middle-income countries. His career goal is to become a nutritional epidemiologist in the future.
A Pro-inflammatory Diet is Associated with Increased Cardiometabolic Risk in Ecuadorian Children
Background: Cardiometabolic diseases, such as heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes, are a leading worldwide cause of morbidity, mortality, and disability. Inflammation plays a crucial role in cardiometabolic disease. Diet is hypothesized as an important low-grade inflammation modifier. However, studies exploring the association between dietary inflammatory potential and cardiometabolic risk factors are scarce. Our work is the first to examine this association in Ecuadorian children.
Objective: The objective of our study was to characterize the relationship between dietary inflammation with CVD risk factors in Ecuadorian children.
Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study with 276 primary school children living in low-income neighborhoods in Quito, Ecuador. Face-to-face interviews were used to collect data on sociodemographic characteristics, usual dietary intake, health history, and cardiometabolic risk factors including anthropometric, laboratory, and clinical indicators. We adopted an energy-adjusted dietary inflammatory index (E-DII) to evaluate dietary inflammatory potential. Multivariate linear regression models were used to examine the association between dietary inflammatory potential as indicated by E-DII and cardiometabolic risk factors.
Results: Findings from linear regression models show that higher E-DII scores were significantly associated with increased values of total cholesterol (p=0.02), low-density lipoprotein (p=0.04), systolic blood pressure (p=0.02), and diastolic blood pressure (p=0.01). From multivariate models, higher E-DII scores were significantly associated with increased values of total cholesterol (p=0.03) and diastolic blood pressure (p=0.01)
Conclusions: The dietary inflammation as indicated by E-DII scores is significantly associated with increased cardiometabolic risk factors in Ecuadorian children.
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