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Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Adult diet patterns linked to diabetes risk in US women

Relative diabetes rates (hazard ratios) were 2.72 and 2.04 for lifetime insulin-related and inflammation-related diet scores, respectively, comparing the highest and lowest fifths.

Paper by Yin Zhang, Mingyang Song, Molin Wang, +11 more authorsEdward L. Giovannucci · Harvard University

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Populations
Studied:
Cohort study of 40,135 US female registered nurses, 1997 to 2019
What changed:
Diabetes risk was higher with the highest versus lowest lifetime insulin-related diet scores (hazard ratio 2.72)
The catch:
Adolescent diets were recalled years later and are vulnerable to recall error
In the record:
The 4th paper on dietary inflammatory potential with results in people; 17 on record in all.
Why it’s aging research:
It bears on staying healthy in midlife and later life.

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper
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The prospective observational study analyzed 40,135 US female registered nurses from a cohort enrolled at ages 25–42 in 1989. Adult diets were assessed every four years; women recalled their high-school diets in 1997. Follow-up ran from 1997 to 2019, with 3,201 new type 2 diabetes diagnoses.

Diet scores reflected patterns linked to insulin, a blood-sugar-regulating hormone, and inflammation. Higher scores before and after menopause were independently associated with higher diabetes risk. Adolescent scores showed no clear link to lifetime risk, but were linked to slightly higher risk before menopause. Estimated diabetes incidence by age 70 was 17.3% versus 7.1% for consistently high versus low insulin-related scores throughout adolescence and adulthood. For inflammation-related scores, it was 16.4% versus 9.2%.

Why it matters

Type 2 diabetes is an age-related disease. The authors identified adulthood as the most critical window for dietary interventions aimed at reducing lifetime diabetes risk.

Caveats

This observational study could not establish cause and effect, and women recalled adolescent diets years later. It studied female nurses and excluded those with prior type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer other than nonmelanoma skin cancer.

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