New York: Eating habits established earlier in life may be linked to the potential future development of asthma because new research has found that substances present in cooked meat are associated with increased wheezing in children.
Their study, published in the journal Thorax, highlights pro-inflammatory compounds called advanced glycation end products (AGEs) as an example of early dietary risk factors that can have broad clinical and health implications for the prevention of inflammatory airway disease.
“Research that identifies nutritional factors that affect respiratory symptoms in children is important because those risks can change and can help guide health recommendations,” said senior study author Sonali Bose, an assistant professor at Icahn School of Medicine on Mount Sinai in New York City. .
“We hope that our findings will inform future longitudinal studies to further investigate whether these specific dietary components play a role in children’s respiratory diseases, such as asthma.”
The researchers examined 4,388 children between the ages of 2 and 17 as part of the National Health and Nutrition Survey 2003-2006 (NHANES), a program of the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It is designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States through interviews and physical examinations.
The researchers used data from the NHANES survey to assess the association between dietary advanced glycation end products and the frequency of meat consumption and respiratory symptoms.
They found that higher intakes of glycation end products were significantly associated with increased chances of wheezing, which included wheezing that interfered with sleep and exercise, and required prescription medications.
Similarly, higher seafood-free meat intake was associated with sleep-disordered wheezing and wheezing that required prescription medications.
“We found that higher consumption of dietary glycation end products, which were largely derived from seafood-free meat intake, was associated with an increased risk of wheezing in children, regardless of overall dietary quality or established asthma diagnosis,” Jing Gennie Wang , lead author of the study and former associate at Icahn Medical School on Mount Sinai.