Dietary Antioxidant Quality Score and Epilepsy Odds in the US Adults: A Cross-Sectional NHANES Study

Epilepsy is defined by the occurrence of a minimum of two unprovoked seizures, with a temporal gap exceeding 24 h between episodes. This research aimed to ascertain the link between dietary antioxidant quality score (DAQS) and the odds of developing epilepsy.

In this cross-sectional study, utilizing data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey spanning 2017-2020, binary logistic regression analyses were carried out to investigate the link between DAQS and the odds of epilepsy. We recruited a cohort of 1086 individuals with pathologically confirmed diagnoses of epilepsy with 1086 controls.

The mean age of participants was 58.26 years, with cases and controls averaging 54.26 and 62.26 years, respectively. Highest adherence to the DAQS was significantly linked to epilepsy compared to their counterparts with the lowest adherence (odds ratio [OR]: 0.76, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.68-0.85, p < 0.001), subgroup results revealed higher odds in those refusing education (OR: 5.6, 95% CI: 1.00-10.6, p = 0.05) and never married individuals (OR: 1.63, 95% CI: 1.22-2.18, p = 0.001). Conversely, significant reductions were observed for education levels beyond nineth grade (e.g., OR: 0.33 for high school graduates, p <0.001) and widowed participants (OR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.56-0.91, p = 0.006). Ethnically, non-Hispanic Blacks and Asians had 36% (OR: 0.64, 95% CI: 0.44-0.94, p = 0.024) and 65% (OR: 0.35, 95% CI: 0.20-0.60, p<0.001) lower odds than Mexican Americans.

Our findings suggest a modest inverse association between higher DAQS and epilepsy odds; however, due to the cross-sectional design, no causal inference can be made. Sociodemographic factors appear to modify this association and should be considered in future research.