Mediterranean diet in the Castilian plains: Dietary patterns and childhood asthma in 6–7-year-old children from the province of Salamanca

Abstract

Salamanca is the only Spanish center with no coastal line participating in the Global Asthma Network phase-I study. Questionnaires were collected from 6–7-year-old 2388 children and analyzed in particular for their diet and asthma symptoms as part of this study. The prevalence of current asthma (CA) was 9%, doctor-confirmed asthma (DCA) was 7%, and current severe asthma (CSA) accounted to 2.9%. Two Mediterranean Diet Scores (MDS) were performed to evaluate adherence of these children to the Mediterranean diet. Principal component analysis generated four dietary patterns. The relationship between asthma and each food type, MDS, and dietary patterns was assessed using multivariate adjusted logistic regression. Adherence to the Mediterranean diet by Salamanca’s children and prevalence of asthma in Salamanca were similar to the findings of coastal located centers of other studies. High punctuation in MDS was associated with high prevalence of asthma. Higher scores for the pattern “Fats and sugar” was associated with less current asthma but not with DCA or CSA. These findings might be due to improvement in the diet of asthma children, reverse causation factor, how the questionnaire collected information about diet, and perhaps the manner in which the scores were constructed. The complexity of interconnections between nutrients, foods, and dietary patterns, and the heterogeneous nature of asthma, makes it difficult to identify single factor that affected its development. Our findings require corroboration by additional studies.