Ultraprocessed Food May Increase Long-Term Risk for IBS

TOPLINE:

Higher consumption of ultraprocessed food (UPF) is associated with an increased risk of developing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), with a significant dose-response relationship.

METHODOLOGY:

• The simultaneous rise in UPF consumption and IBS in recent years is concerning, but there is a lack of epidemiologic evidence regarding the link between UPF consumption and the risk of developing IBS.
• This study included 178,711 participants without IBS, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, or cancer (mean age, 55.8 years; 53.1% women) from the UK Biobank who had completed a 24-hour diet recall questionnaire over five cycles.
• The researchers used the NOVA system to categorize food into four groups, ranging from unprocessed or minimally processed food to UPF. They calculated consumption of food in each group on the basis of portion sizes and UPF consumption as a percentage of total diet intake (as grams per day) using data from participants who completed at least two dietary cycles.
• The primary outcome was incident IBS.

TAKEAWAY:

• Over a median of 11.3 years of follow-up, 2690 incident IBS cases were reported.
• The mean UPF consumption was 21% of the total diet.
• For every 10% increase in UPF consumption, the risk for IBS also increased by 8%.
• The individuals in the highest quartile of UPF consumption had about a 20% higher risk for IBS than those in the lowest quartile.

IN PRACTICE:

“Our findings suggest that avoiding or lowering UPF consumption could be considered as a potential strategy to help reduce the increasing burden of IBS,” the authors wrote.

SOURCE:

The study, led by Shanshan Wu, PhD, Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University, National Clinical Research Center for Digestive Disease, Beijing, China, was published online in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

LIMITATIONS:

Questionnaire-based data could introduce misclassification and recall bias. Lifestyle factors (eg, smoking) or nutritional factors (eg, total intake of protein, fat, and carbohydrates) that may confound the association were not considered. The observational study design has inherent bias.

DISCLOSURES:

This study was supported by grants from the Beijing Nova Program, National Key Research and Development Program of China, and Beijing Science and Technology Project. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.

A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.