Dietary fibre linked to decreased inflammation in overweight minority youth

Summary Objective The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between diet and inflammation, and adiposity in minority youth. Design and Methods The study was designed as a cross-sectional analysis of 142 overweight (≥85th body mass index percentile) Hispanic and African–American adolescents (14–18 years) with the following measures: anthropometrics, adiposity via magnetic resonance imaging, dietary intake via 24-h dietary recalls, and inflammation markers from fasting blood draws utilizing a multiplex panel. Partial correlations were estimated and analysis of covariance (ancova) models fit to examine the relationship among dietary variables, inflammation markers and adiposity measures with the following a priori covariates: Tanner stage, ethnicity, sex, total energy intake, total body fat and total lean mass. Results Inference based on ancova models showed that the highest tertile of fibre intake (mean intake of 21.3 ± 6.1 g d−1) vs. the lowest tertile of fibre intake (mean intake of 7.4 ± 1.8 g d−1) was associated with 36% lower plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (P = 0.02) and 43% lower resistin (P = 0.02), independent of covariates. Similar results were seen for insoluble fibre. No other dietary variables included in this study were associated with inflammation markers. Conclusions These results suggest that increases in dietary fibre could play an important role in lowering inflammation and therefore metabolic disease risk in high-risk minority youth.