A posteriori dietary patterns and risk of inflammatory bowel disease: a meta-analysis of observational studies

Abstract

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic inflammatory disorder which affects the gastrointestinal tract. Many factors, such as genetics, stress, and dietary patterns have been related to the risk of this disease. Adherence to a prudent/healthy dietary pattern, due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, help to reduce the risk of many chronic diseases such as IBD. The results from previous studies regarding the association between dietary patterns and risk of IBD, including Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), are inconsistent. This meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the potential relations between dietary patterns and risk of CD and UC. PubMed and Scopus were searched up to October 2017 for eligible studies. Random-effects or fixed-effects models were used to pool the estimated risks for the highest versus the lowest category of extracted dietary patterns. A total of six studies, including four case-control and two cohort studies with 1099 cases and 263112 controls/participants were included in the meta-analysis. A decreased risk of CD was seen for the highest compared with the lowest categories of healthy dietary pattern (OR/RR=0.39, 95%CI=0.16-0.62), while no significant association with western dietary pattern was observed (OR/RR=0.78, 95% CI: 0.51-1.04). Furthermore, no significant relationship was found between healthy (OR/RR=0.61, 95%CI=0.04-1.18, random effects) and western/unhealthy (OR/RR=0.97, 95% CI: 0.67-1.26) dietary patterns and risk of UC. The results of the current meta-analysis showed that a healthy dietary pattern is associated with a lower risk of CD. Further studies are warranted to confirm these findings.