Is The Healthy Eating Index-2015 Associated With Rheumatoid Arthritis?

Objective: Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015) is a multidimensional criterion of diet quality utilized to evaluate how well people’s dietary behaviors align with major recommendations of the 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. We aim to investigate the association between the diet quality and Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) activity.Design: Cross-sectional studySetting: This study was done on 184 patients with RA in rheumatology clinic in Kermanshah city, Iran, in 2020. RA was diagnosed according to the criteria of the 2010 American College of Rheumatology/ European League against Rheumatism. The overall quality diet was extracted from a validated 168-item food frequency questioner (FFQ) to calculate the HEI-2015 score. RA disease activity was assessed using Disease Activity Score 28 (DAS28) scores. One-way ANOVA and ANCOVA were done to find the associations.Participants: RA patientsResults: Individuals in the highest HEI-2015 quartile had a lower mean Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) than those in the lowest quartiles of the HEI scores (P-value: 0.014). A linear trend towards decreasing waist circumference in patients was observed with increasing quartiles of the HEI-2015 scores (P-value= 0.005). After controlling for all potential confounders, patients in the highest HEI-2015 quartile had the lowest DAS28 scores than those in the lowest quartile of the HEI-2015 scores (Q1= 3.65; 95% CI= 3.29 – 4.02 vs. Q4= 2.35; 95% CI= 1.94 - 2.67; P-value<0.001).Conclusion: Our results indicated that following a high diet quality might be one of the therapeutic strategies to control or reduce the disease activity in RA patients.