Those with a healthier diet had lower disability scores
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 18, 2023 (HealthDay News) — A prudent pattern diet that focuses on vegetables, legumes, and fruits may play a role in symptom management in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to study results presented at MSMilan, the joint meeting of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis and Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis, held from Oct. 11 to 13 in Milan.
“Diet is probably the behavior of greatest interest to people [with] MS, as they know the literature says lifestyle is potentially related to MS and they want to do something that will modify their disease,” Steve Simpson-Yap, Ph.D., from The University of Melbourne in Australia, told Elsevier’s PracticeUpdate. “We found a significant relationship between diet patterns and level of disability, as measured by [the] MS Impact Scale.”
Simpson-Yap and colleagues used data from the U.K. MS Register in 2016 (2,278 participants) and 2022 (2,887 participants). Dietary intake was divided into a prudent pattern diet and a Western pattern diet, which focused on cookies, cakes/pies, chips, and takeout. The authors evaluated the effect of diet on several clinical severity measures, including ambulatory disability, fatigue, depression, and anxiety.
The researchers found that a prudent diet score was associated with lower scores on the MS Walking Scale and MS Impact Scale-Physical and lower frequencies of severe depression. However, a Western diet score was tied to higher scores on the same scales, as well as higher frequencies of fatigue, severe depression, and severe anxiety.
“While suggestive, these results are not demonstrative of a causal relationship,” Simpson-Yap told Elsevier’s PracticeUpdate. “Replication and substantiation in a prospective analysis is required. People with MS should be guided to maintain a healthy diet for general health and well-being, but we cannot yet recommend diet for clinical therapy to modify clinical course in MS.”