Abstract
ObjectiveWe examined whether trajectories of dietary patterns from 6 to 24 months of age are associated with intelligence quotient (IQ) in childhood and adolescence.MethodsParticipants were children enrolled in a prospective UK birth cohort (n = 7652) who had IQ measured at age 8 and/or 15 years. Dietary patterns were previously extracted from questionnaires when children were aged 6, 15 and 24 months using principal component analysis. Dietary trajectories were generated by combining scores on similar dietary patterns across each age, using multilevel mixed models. Associations between dietary trajectories and IQ were examined in generalized linear models with adjustment for potential confounders.ResultsFour dietary pattern trajectories were constructed from 6 to 24 months of age and were named according to foods that made the strongest contribution to trajectory scores; Healthy (characterised by breastfeeding at 6 months, raw fruit and vegetables, cheese and herbs at 15 and 24 months); Discretionary (biscuits, chocolate, crisps at all ages), Traditional (meat, cooked vegetables and puddings at all ages) and, Ready-to-eat (use of ready-prepared baby foods at 6 and 15 months, biscuits, bread and breakfast cereals at 24 months). In fully-adjusted models, a 1 SD change in the Healthy trajectory was weakly associated with higher IQ at age 8 (1.07 (95%CI 0.17, 1.97)) but not 15 years (0.49 (−0.28, 1.26)). Associations between the Discretionary and Traditional trajectories with IQ at 8 and 15 years were as follows; Discretionary; 8 years −0.35(−1.03, 0.33), 15 years −0.73(−1.33, −0.14) Traditional; 8 years −0.19(−0.71, 0.33)15 years −0.41(−0.77, −0.04)). The Ready-to-eat trajectory had no association with IQ at either age (8 years 0.32(−4.31, 4.95), 15 years 1.11(−3.10, 5.33).ConclusionsThe Discretionary and Traditional dietary pattern trajectories from 6 to 24 months of age, over the period when food patterns begin to emerge, are weakly associated with IQ in adolescence.
Highlights
For at least 80 years, the concept that early life diet may have a lasting effect on cognitive outcomes has interested researchers[1] and appealed to the wider public
Of the 13978 children in the core ALSPAC cohort who survived to 1 year of age, 6326 did not have intelligence quotient (IQ) measured at either 8 and 15 years of age, 2619 had one or both Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) subscales measured only at 8 years, 555 had Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI) measured only at 16 years, and 4478 had IQ measured at both 8 and 16 years of age
The mothers of children who had IQ measured were less likely to have smoked during pregnancy, a higher proportion were married, had completed O-level education or higher and were more likely to breastfeed their infant compared with children who did not have IQ measured
Summary
For at least 80 years, the concept that early life diet may have a lasting effect on cognitive outcomes has interested researchers[1] and appealed to the wider public. There is evidence from randomised controlled trials that diet in early life may influence cognitive development in childhood[2,3]. In a study involving n = 241 children, Gale and co-workers (2009) demonstrated that a standard deviation increase in ‘infant guidelines’ dietary pattern score at either 6 or 12 months was associated with around 2 to 3 point higher full-scale IQ scores at 4 years of age[8]. One strategy for addressing the correlation between multiple measures of diet is to include past diet as a potential confounder in the analysis[9] This method attempts to isolate the independent effect of diet at a particular time period rather than quantifying changes in diet over the total time period. There are very few examples in the literature of how to model diet longitudinally[10,11,12], and to the best of our knowledge there are no examples of longitudinal modelling of dietary patterns as they emerge from infancy
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