Diets rich in red meat, packed with calories linked to risk of Crohn’s disease

Adopting diets with high inflammatory potential amplifies the risk of developing Crohn’s disease (CD), but not ulcerative colitis (UC), a recent study has found.

Data from 166,903 women and 41,931 men were retrieved from the Nurses’ Health Study I and II, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Food frequency questionnaires were used to calculate the empirical dietary inflammatory pattern (EDIP) scores, while CD and UC incidence was determined through a medical record review.

Over 4,949,938 person-years of follow-up, 328 and 428 incident cases of CD and UC were recorded, resulting in crude incidence rates of 6.6 and 8.6 per 100,000 person-years, respectively. Participants were categorized according to quartiles of average EDIP score, and the researchers saw that proinflammatory diets tended to have higher intakes of calories and red meat.

Those in topmost quartile of EDIP score saw a 51-percent higher risk of CD development than their counterparts in the bottom quartile (hazard ratio [HR], 1.51, 95 percent CI, 1.10–2.07; p_trend=0.01). The difference in respective CD incidence rates reflected this pattern of risk (8.7 vs 5.8 per 100,000 person-years).

The relationship between diet and CD risk did not change when only recent (p_trend=0.03) or baseline (p_trend=0.004) EDIP scores were considered. Moreover, adjusting for dietary fibre likewise had no meaningful impact on the observed correlation, suggesting that it was unlikely that fibre intake was principally responsible for the interaction between diet and CD risk.

In contrast, comparing the top vs bottom EDIP quartiles showed no clear association between diet and UC risk (HR, 1.10, 95 percent CI, 0.83–1.46; p_trend=0.44), reflecting similar incidence rates (9.3 vs 8.3 per 100,000 person-years, respectively).