Dietary pattern, inflammation, and incidence of type 2 diabetes in women

Inflammation is considered a key mechanism leading to type 2 diabetes, but dietary exposures that lead to inflammation and diabetes are largely unknown.

Our objective was to investigate the relation between a dietary pattern associated with biomarkers of inflammation and the incidence of type 2 diabetes.

We conducted a nested case-control study of 656 cases of type 2 diabetes and 694 controls among women in the Nurses' Health Study and 2 prospective cohort studies of 35,340 women in the Nurses' Health Study and 89,311 women in the Nurses' Health Study II who were followed for incident diabetes.

Through the use of reduced rank regression, we identified a dietary pattern that was strongly related to inflammatory markers in the nested case-control study. This pattern, which was high in sugar-sweetened soft drinks, refined grains, diet soft drinks, and processed meat but low in wine, coffee, cruciferous vegetables, and yellow vegetables, was associated with an increased risk of diabetes (multivariate-adjusted odds ratio comparing extreme quintiles: 3.09; 95% CI: 1.99, 4.79). We identified 1517 incident cases of confirmed type 2 diabetes in the Nurses' Health Study (458,991 person-years) and 724 incident cases in the Nurses' Health Study II (701,155 person-years). After adjustment for body mass index and other potential lifestyle confounders, the relative risks comparing extreme quintiles of the pattern were 2.56 (95% CI: 2.10, 3.12; P for trend < 0.001) in the Nurses' Health Study and 2.93 (95% CI: 2.18, 3.92; P for trend < 0.001) in the Nurses' Health Study II.

The dietary pattern identified may increase chronic inflammation and raise the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.