Inflammatory potential of diet and risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease : a prospective cohort study

Background/objectives: Diet is an important factor that can exacerbate or ameliorate chronic inflammation, which has been implicated in the pathogenesis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). However, no prospective study has yet investigated the relation between the inflammatory potential of diet and NAFLD. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between the inflammatory potential of the diet and the risk of NAFLD. Subject/methods: The study included 12,877 participants aged over 18 years (mean [standard deviation]: 39.4 [11.5] years). Dietary intake was assessed at baseline through food frequency questionnaires. Using white blood cell count as the inflammatory marker, we newly created a dietary inflammatory potential score by reduced rank regression and stepwise linear regression. NAFLD was identified by abdominal ultrasound during yearly health checkups. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate the association between the dietary inflammatory potential score and the risk of NAFLD. Results: During a median follow-up period of 4.2 years, 2744 first incident cases of NAFLD occurred. After adjustment for potential confounders, the multivariable hazards ratios (95% confidence intervals) for NAFLD across increasing quartiles of the dietary inflammatory potential score were 1.00 (reference), 1.01 (0.90, 1.13), 1.15 (1.03, 1.29), and 1.26 (1.13, 1.41), with P for trend