Dietary Profile of Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Clinical Remission—A Preliminary Study

TL;DR

This study found that patients with inflammatory bowel disease have imbalanced diets even when their condition is in remission, suggesting a need for dietary interventions.

Contribution

The study is the first to characterize dietary patterns in IBD patients during clinical remission, revealing significant nutrient inadequacies.

Findings

IBD patients showed significant dietary imbalances in macronutrient and micronutrient intake compared to healthy controls.

Over 80% of IBD patients had inadequate intake of total fiber and 13 micronutrients.

Abstract

Imbalanced dietary intake is associated with the development of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) and is often observed during the active phases of Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Cumulative data also suggest the potential for dietary manipulation in avoiding IBD relapse. However, there is a paucity of dietary data from patients in clinical remission to guide such an approach. Our study aimed to characterize the dietary pattern and adequacy of patients with IBD in clinical remission. Data on dietary intake (three alternate 24 h food records) were collected from 40 patients with IBD (20 CD and 20 UC) and 45 gender-matched healthy controls (HC). Statistical comparisons between patients and controls employed Student’s t-test, Mann–Whitney U, chi-squared, and Fisher’s exact tests. The adequacy of dietary intake of IBD patients was further studied by assessing the nutrient inadequacy prevalence, estimated using the Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI) framework and the Estimated Average Requirement (EAR) parameter. We observed significant dietary imbalances among patients with IBD compared to the HC group, marked by disparities in both macronutrient and micronutrient intakes. Inadequacies with frequencies >80% were observed for the ingestion of total fiber and 13 micronutrients in IBD patients. Our preliminary findings suggest that imbalanced dietary intake is also characteristic among individuals with IBD during clinical remission, corroborating the need for dietary interventions in this population.