Objectives: University students are vulnerable to unhealthy eating habits that characterize a proinflammatory diet. This study aimed to estimate the dietary inflammatory index (DII) and its association with the trajectory of body adiposity markers in university students.
Methods: The study analyzed data from 685 students entering a Brazilian public university in 2016 and 2017 and followed until 2018. DII was estimated from 39 dietary parameters obtained by 24-h dietary recall. Body adiposity was assessed by anthropometric markers and the percentage of body fat. Linear mixed-effects models were used to estimate the trajectory of adiposity markers according to DII tertiles.
Results: After adjustment for confounding variables, at baseline, DII showed a positive association with increased percentage of body fat among men (β = 0.52; 95% CI: 0.01; 1.03) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR; β = 0.15; 95% CI: 0.12; 0.18) and among women with all body adiposity markers: BMI (β = 0.68; 95% CI: 0.30; 1.05), percentage of body fat (β = 1.43; 95% CI: 0.74; 2.11), WC (β = 1.15; 95% CI: 0.41; 1.89) and WHtR (β = 0.13; 95% CI:0,10; 0.16). The rate of change of the outcome variables over time was not associated with DII at baseline.
Conclusions: The diet of university students in this Brazilian cohort study was characterized as proinflammatory and it was associated with body adiposity markers.
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