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

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.

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