Maternal allergy-preventive diet index, offspring infant diet diversity, and childhood allergic diseases

Area of Science:

• Pediatric Allergy and Immunology
• Nutritional Epidemiology
• Preventive Medicine

Background:

• Childhood allergic diseases are a growing concern.
• Previous research has explored diet diversity's role, but not its combined effect with maternal diet quality during pregnancy.
• This study investigates both factors in a pre-birth cohort.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the association between maternal diet index during pregnancy and infant diet diversity at 1 year with the risk of developing allergic diseases in offspring.
• To determine if infant diet diversity modifies the association between maternal diet index and allergic disease risk.

Main Methods:

• Offspring allergic disease diagnoses were extracted from electronic medical records.
• Maternal and infant dietary data were collected through self-reports.
• Parametric Weibull time-to-event models were used to analyze the time to allergic disease development.

Main Results:

• Higher infant diet diversity at 1 year was associated with a reduced risk of a combined allergic disease outcome (p=.002).
• Both maternal diet index and infant diet diversity were independently associated with the combined outcome (p<.05).
• Infant diet diversity did not modify the maternal diet index association (p=.5); the lowest risk group had higher scores for both.

Conclusions:

• Both maternal diet quality during pregnancy and infant diet diversity at 12 months are independently associated with a lower risk of combined allergic diseases.
• These findings identify maternal diet index during pregnancy and infant diet diversity as potential targets for allergy prevention strategies.