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Clinical Summary

Link between IBD, inflammatory foods remains elusive

Takeaway

  • Diet-related inflammation is not associated with symptom severity in patients with IBD.

Why this matters

  • Patients with IBD tend to avoid certain foods they believe exacerbate their symptoms, but evidence for associations between specific foods and disease activity is limited.

Study design

  • Researchers studied dietary intakes of patients with either Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative colitis (UC) who were referred for treatment to a hospital gastroenterology clinic (N=143; UC, 77.6%; CD, 22.4%; mean age, 38.7±10.8 years; women, 46.2%), using a 168-item food frequency questionnaire.
  • They assessed the inflammatory potential of patient diets based on Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) and Empirically Derived Inflammatory Pattern (EDIP) scores, and disease severity based on the CD activity index or the UC Mayo score.
  • Funding: None.

Key results

  • 44.8% (n=64) patients had active IBD.
  • DII and EDIP scores did not differ significantly between patients with active and inactive disease (−1.45±1.04 vs −1.21±1.24 and 0.56±0.22 vs 0.53±0.28, respectively).

Limitations

  • The study was cross-sectional and single centre, with a small sample size.

References


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