Dietary patterns in patients with asthma and their relationship with asthma-related emergency room visits: NHANES 2005–2016

ABSTRACT

Rationale

Extensive interdependencies exist between dietary intake, metabolic dysregulation, and asthma; however, the dietary pattern in adults with asthma remains unknown.

Objectives

To evaluate the association between dietary patterns and asthma ER visits and explore the effect of the interaction between race and diet on asthma.

Methods

Using NHANES data, we compared dietary patterns between adults with asthma with and without asthma-related emergency room (ER) visits in the previous year, and between subjects of different races. The 2015 Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2015) was used to assess alignment between dietary patterns and the 2015–2020 Dietary Guideline for Americans.

Results

Among 1681 individuals included in the study, 193 reported asthma-related ER visit. Patients with asthma had low fruit and vegetable intake, and a low mean (SE) HEI-2015 score [52.6 (0.53)]. Individuals with asthma-related ER visits had lower vegetable consumption compared to those without (median 0.61 vs. 0.85 cup equivalents). Furthermore, non-Hispanic Blacks (NHB) reported lower amount of vegetable (median cup equivalent 0.58 vs. 0.89) and fruit intake (0.17 vs. 0.39) and had a lower HEI-2015 score (49.9 vs. 52.9) comparing to non-Hispanic Whites. No association was discovered between dietary patterns and ER visits in multivariable analysis, or significant interactions between diet and race in predicting the need for ER visits.

Conclusions

Dietary patterns in adult with current asthma are frequently misaligned with current dietary guidelines. Patients with asthma-related ER visits and of NHB race had lower vegetable consumption; however, the associations disappeared in multivariable analysis. The impact of diet on asthma is not straightforward and deserves further investigation.

Supplemental data for this article is available online at at www.tandfonline.com/ijas.

KEYWORDS:

• Asthma
• dietary pattern
• HEI-2015
• race
• vegetable

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr Kim Yaeger for her input in this manuscript.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Author contributions

PZ and JGZ designed the research studies; PZ, RL, SA, JGZ analyzed the data; PZ and JGZ wrote the first draft of manuscript; RL, SA, MR, SBK made critical contribution to the manuscript. Guarantor of the paper: PZ and JGZ

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (NIH NHLBI) [grant number: K08HL133381] (Dr. Joe G Zein).