The association between dietary inflammation index and depression

Ling Luo; Jie Hu; Ruixian Huang; Danli Kong; Wei Hu; Yuanlin Ding; Haibing Yu

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1131802

The association between dietary inflammation index and depression

Front Psychiatry. 2023 Mar 23:14:1131802. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1131802. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ling Luo^{1

2}, Jie Hu³, Ruixian Huang², Danli Kong², Wei Hu^{2

4}, Yuanlin Ding², Haibing Yu^{1

2

5}

Affiliations

¹ The First Dongguan Affiliated Hospital, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan, Guangdong, China.
² Department of Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, School of Public Health, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan, Guangdong, China.
³ Department of Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
⁴ Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Guangdong Medical University, Dongguan, Guangdong, China.

Abstract

Objective: We aimed to evaluate whether depression is associated with increased risk of dietary inflammatory index (DII) or energy-adjusted DII (E-DII) and whether the association is partly explained by insulin resistance (IR).

Methods: Base on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005-2018. Univariate analyses of continuous and categorical variables were performed using t-test, ANOVA, and χ ² test, respectively. Logistic regression was used to analyze the relationship between DII or E-DII and depression in three different models. Mediation analysis was used to assess the potential mediation effects of homeostatic model assessment-IR (HOMA-IR).

Results: A total of 70,190 participants were included, and the DII score was higher in the depressed group. DII score was related to all participant characteristics except age (p < 0.05). After being included in covariates (Model 3), participants in the highest quartile of DII score have increased odds of depression (OR: 1.82, 95% CI: 1.28-2.58) compared with those in the first quartile of DII score. And, a significant dose-response relationship was found (p-trend <0.05). No interaction between DII and HOMA-IR was observed in terms of the risk of depression, and HOMA-IR did not find to play a mediating role in the association between DII and depression. Similar results were obtained for the association between E-DII and depression.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that a higher pro-inflammatory diet increases the risk of depression in U.S. adults, while there was no evidence of a multiplicative effect of DII or E-DII and HOMA-IR on disease risk, nor of a mediating effect of HOMA-IR.

Keywords: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey; depression; dietary inflammatory index; insulin resistance; mediation analysis.