Healthy diet could reduce COPD risk

People with a higher score on the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 are at a lower risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to Dr. Raphaëlle Varraso and associates.

^{Courtesy of National Cancer Institute}

For both men and women, those in the highest quintile based on AHEI-2010 score were at the lowest risk of COPD, compared with those in the lowest quintile. For women, the third-highest quintile had the highest risk of COPD with a hazard ratio of 1.01, slightly higher than the baseline of 1. For men, the baseline quintile had the highest risk of COPD, but the second-highest quintile had the next-highest hazard ratio at 0.9.

Although efforts to prevent COPD should continue to focus on smoking cessation, these prospective findings support the importance of a healthy diet in multi-interventional programs to prevent COPD, the researchers concluded.

Read the full article at the BMJ (doi:10.1136/bmj.h286).