Adherence to Healthy Dietary Patterns and Glioma: A Matched Case-Control Study

Abstract

Recent studies have revealed a putative relationship between diet and glioma development and prognosis, but few studies have examined the association between overall diet and glioma risk. This study, conducted in China, employed a hospital-based case-control approach. The researchers utilized an a priori method based on dietary data to evaluate compliance scores for five healthy dietary patterns (the Mediterranean diet, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, the Mediterranean-DASH diet Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) diet, the Paleolithic diet, and the Planetary Health Diet) in 1012 participants. At the same time, data-driven methods were used to explore the association between dietary patterns and glioma via principal component analysis (PCA). In the multivariate model, adhering to the Mediterranean diet (odds ratio (OR) = 0.29; 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 0.17–0.52), the DASH diet (OR = 0.09; 95% CI: 0.04–0.18), the MIND diet (OR = 0.25; 95% CI: 0.14–0.44), and the Paleolithic diet (OR = 0.13; 95% CI: 0.06–0.25) was associated with a reduced glioma risk. The results of PCA suggested that increasing the intake of plant-based foods and fish and limiting foods rich in carbohydrates, fats, and salts were associated with a reduced glioma risk. There was a substantial nonlinear dose–response association between glioma and the Mediterranean diet score. However, the DASH diet score, the MIND diet score, and the Paleolithic diet score exhibited linear dose–response relationships. Therefore, this study finds that dietary patterns may be an influencing factor for glioma risk.