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Healthy diet lowered type 2 diabetes risk among minority women
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Women in all racial and ethnic groups had a reduced risk for type 2 diabetes when maintaining a healthy diet, with a greater reduction of preventable cases among Asian, Hispanic and black women, according to recent study findings.
“This study suggests that a healthy overall diet can play a vital role in preventing type 2 diabetes, particularly in minority women who have elevated risks of the disease,” Jinnie Rhee, MSc, ScD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a press release. “As the incidence of type 2 diabetes continues to increase at an alarming rate worldwide, these findings can have global importance for what may be the largest public health threat of this century.”
Jinnie Rhee
Rhee and colleagues evaluated data on 156,030 white women and 2,026 Asian, 2,053 Hispanic and 2,307 black women from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and Nurses’ Health Study II (NHS II) to determine the association between diet and incidence of type 2 diabetes. A diabetes risk reduction score was created by researchers, which included components associated with the risk for type 2 diabetes.
Overall, 10,922 white, 307 black, 193 Hispanic and 157 Asian women had incident type 2 diabetes during a maximum 28 years of follow-up in NHS and 18 years in NHS II. Compared with white women, more women in the minority group had a family history of diabetes, and the diabetes risk reduction was lower among Asian and black women, although small.
There was an inverse association between risk for type 2 diabetes and dietary diabetes risk reduction score for all racial and ethnic groups (all P for trend <.05) and overall minority women (P for trend <.001). The highest quartile of diabetes reduction risk score among participants had a lower risk for type 2 diabetes compared with those in the lowest quartile: white (HR=0.52; 95% CI, 0.49-0.56), Asian (HR=0.58; 95% CI, 0.35-0.95), Hispanic (HR=0.45; 95% CI, 0.28-0.74), black (HR=0.68; 95% CI, 0.48-0.97) and overall (HR=0.64; 95% CI, 0.51-0.8).
A healthier diet could prevent 5.3 cases of diabetes per 1,000 white women and eight cases per 1,000 minority women per year.
“Aspects of diet that can help prevent type 2 diabetes in women of European origin have similar effects in women of other racial and ethnic groups because basic human biology is similar across different population groups,” Rhee told Endocrine Today. “However, minority women may reap greater benefits from maintaining a healthy diet, which is particularly important for these women because they have higher initial risk of diabetes.” – by Amber Cox
For more information:
Jinnie Rhee, MSc, ScD, can be reach at 1070 Arastradero Road, Suite 3C3109, Palo Alto, CA 94304; email: rheej@stanford.edu.
Disclosure: The study was funded in part by the NIH.
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