Fruit tegen astma.*

Uit een studie onder 515 Europese volwassenen blijkt dat de kans op krijgen van astma veel groter is bij mensen die weinig fruit en vitamine C in hun dieet hebben.

Antioxidant nutrients independently influence symptomatic asthma

A reduced dietary intake of fruit, vitamin C, and manganese is associated with symptomatic asthma in adults, an effect independent of general lifestyle and key demographic variables, UK researchers report.
Although low intakes of certain nutrients, including the antioxidants vitamin C and manganese, have previously been associated with asthma, Nicholas Wareham (Institute of Public Health, Cambridge, UK) and colleagues were skeptical that each of these nutrients could exert an independent protective effect.
The researchers studied associations between dietary data, obtained from self-reported 7-day food diaries, and physician-diagnosed and current symptomatic asthma in 515 adults participating in the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC) study.
Of note, they found that individuals with asthma had a lower median intake of fruit compared with control non-asthmatics (132.1 g/day vs 149.1 g/day), although their age, sex, social class, and daily energy intakes were similar.
Further analysis revealed that individuals who ate more than 46.3 g of fruit per day had a lower risk of diagnosed and symptomatic asthma than people who ate no fruit at all, with odds ratios [OR]s, after adjustment for potential confounders, of 0.59 and 0.57, respectively.
Dietary vitamin C and manganese were inversely and independently associated with symptomatic asthma, with ORs for each increasing quintile of intake of 0.88 and 0.85, respectively.
Only manganese was independently associated with diagnosed asthma, with an OR per quintile increase of 0.86. However, the authors note that misdiagnosis of asthma probably weakened any associations, since one-third of the diagnosed asthma group reported no wheeze within the previous 12 months, of whom less than 50% reported taking regular medication for asthma.
“Symptomatic asthma in adults is associated with a low dietary intake of fruit, the anti-oxidant nutrients vitamin C and manganese, and low plasma vitamin C levels,” they conclude in the journal Thorax.
“These findings suggest that diet may be a potentially modifiable risk factor for the development of asthma.”
Thorax 2006; Early online publication ( Maart 2006)