THURSDAY, Feb. 1, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- High diet quality in early life is associated with a reduced risk for later inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), according to a study published online Jan. 30 in Gut.
Annie Guo, from University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and colleagues assessed whether early-life diet quality and food intake frequencies were associated with subsequent IBD. The analysis included 1-year and 3-year questionnaires in 81,280 children participating in the All Babies in Southeast Sweden and The Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study who had follow-up data through adolescence.
The researchers found that compared with low diet quality, medium and high diet quality at 1 year of age were associated with a reduced risk for IBD (pooled adjusted hazard ratios [aHRs], 0.75 [95 percent confidence interval (CI), 0.58 to 0.98] and 0.75 [95 percent CI, 0.56 to 1.00], respectively). For children at 1 year old with high versus low fish intake, risk trended lower for IBD (aHR, 0.70; 95 percent CI, 0.49 to 1.00) and for ulcerative colitis (pooled aHR, 0.46; 95 percent CI, 0.21 to 0.99). There was also an association seen between higher vegetable intake at 1 year and a lower risk for IBD. An increased risk for IBD was seen with a higher intake of sugar-sweetened beverages. There was no association noted between diet quality at 3 years and later IBD.
"These novel findings suggest that early-life diet, particularly at 1 year of age, is important for later IBD development and support further research in this field to understand the role of diet in the prevention of IBD," the authors write.