Chemo-Preventive Effect of Vegetables and Fruits Consumption on the COVID-19 Pandemic

Clement G Yedjou; Richard A Alo; Jinwei Liu; Juliet Enow; Pierre Ngnepiepa; Richard Long; Lekan Latinwo; Paul B Tchounwou

Chemo-Preventive Effect of Vegetables and Fruits Consumption on the COVID-19 Pandemic

J Nutr Food Sci. 2021;4(2):029. Epub 2021 Mar 25.

Authors

Clement G Yedjou¹, Richard A Alo², Jinwei Liu², Juliet Enow³, Pierre Ngnepiepa⁴, Richard Long¹, Lekan Latinwo¹, Paul B Tchounwou⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biological Sciences, College of Science and Technology, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, 1610 S. Martin Luther King Blvd, Tallahassee, FL 32307, USA.
² Department of Computer Science, College of Science and Technology, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, 1610 S. Martin Luther King Blvd, Tallahassee, FL 32307, USA.
³ Department of Health Policy and Administration. School of Public Health, Jackson State University, 350 W. Woodrow Wilson Drive, Jackson, MS 39213, USA.
⁴ Department of Mathematics, College of Science and Technology, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, 1610 S. Martin Luther King Blvd, Tallahassee, FL 32307, USA.
⁵ Department of Biology, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, Jackson State University, 1400 Lynch Street, Box 18750, Jackson, MS 39217, USA.

PMID: 33884222
PMCID: PMC8057745

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a new disease caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is a global pandemic that has claimed the death of 1,536,957 human beings worldwide including 287,842 deaths in the United States as of December 3, 2020. It has become a major threat to the medical community and the entire healthcare system in every part of the world. Recently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the emergency use of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine on December 12, 2020. However, there are concern about the new COVID-19 vaccine safety, efficacy, and immunity after the vaccination. In addition, both coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccine are new at this point and there is no scientific evidence to know whether people who are vaccinated can still carry the COVID 19 pathogens and pass them along to others. Therefore, many people all over the world have an increased interest in consuming more VF for the purpose of maintaining their health and boosting their immune system. Identifying novel antiviral agents for COVID-19 is of critical importance, and VF is an excellent source for drug discovery and therapeutic development. The objective of this study is to test the hypothesis that a high intake of vegetables and/or fruits prevents COVID-19 incidence and reduces the mortality rate. To achieve this objective, we collected the diet data of COVID-19 from Kaggle (https://www.kaggle.com/mariaren/covid19-healthy-diet-dataset), and used a machine-learning algorithm to examine the effects of different food types on COVID-19 incidences and deaths. Specifically, we used the feature selection method to identify the factors (e.g., diet-related factors) that contribute to COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Data generated from the study demonstrated that VF intake can help to combat the SARS-CoV-2. Taken together, VF may be potential chemopreventive agents for COVID-19 due to their antiviral properties and their ability to boost the human body immune system.

Keywords: COVID-19; Chemo preventive agents; Death rate; Fruits; Incidence rate; Vegetables.

Grants and funding

U54 MD015929/MD/NIMHD NIH HHS/United States