The research focused on communities in Saudi Arabia where there are striking differences in lifestyle and rates of allergies across the country. More than 100 children, drawn from Jeddah and several rural villages, and with symptoms of asthma and wheeze, were compared with 200 non-asthmatic children. Their average age was 12.
Family history, allergic tendencies and a poor diet were significantly associated with wheeze in the children with symptoms. When dietary components were broken down further, and the data analyzed more extensively, those children who had the lowest intakes of vegetables and milk, vitamin E, and certain minerals were at significantly greater risk of wheeze, even after adjusting for other factors. Children, whose diets were relatively low in vegetables and vitamin E intake, were around three times as likely to suffer wheeze.
Family size, numbers of infections, level of affluence, and parental smoking, all of which are considered to be risk factors for asthma, were not associated with wheeze, the research showed.
As prosperity has increased in Saudi Arabia over the past 30 years, so has the tendency toward a Western diet, say the authors, a trend that is more marked in urban areas. Poor diet is likely to be an important risk factor for asthma and allergies, they conclude. And a change in diet may therefore largely explain the increase in prevalence of these conditions in developed countries.
Contact: Professor Anthony Seaton, Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Tel: Friday to Sunday home telephone number available from BMA Press Office; Monday: c/o Mrs. Kay Prior at the Department of Environment, London: 207-890-6296; Tuesday 1224-558-196; Email: a.seaton@abdn.ac.uk.
[Diet and childhood asthma in a society in transition: A study in urban and rural Saudi Arabia. Thorax, 2000; 55: 775-9]
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