Padrões de consumo alimentar e asma na infância

Abstract

Asthma is an important public health issue. Studies show food patterns among the factors associated with asthma and point to breastfeeding as a protective factor. However, this matter is not entirely clear.This study aims to identify the food consumption patterns of preschool children, using latent class analysis (LCA), and to evaluate the association between eating patterns and other factors with active asthmain children in the sixth year of life.This is a cohort epidemiological study using a cross-sectional analysis with the participation of 672 children from the segment of a living birth cohort initiated in 2004, in Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil.The eating patterns were identified through LCA, from indicators consisting of food groups taking into accounttheir chemical composition and the industrial processing to which they were submitted.Active asthma was identified through a questionnaire validated in Brazil, which considers the presence of asthma symptoms in the previous 12 months. Socioeconomic and demographic data as well as life and health habits were collected.In the bivariate analysis, the significance level of 5% was considered. The logistic regression model was adopted to obtain crude and adjusted OR. The results were presented in two articles. Aiming to identify food patterns in the preschoolstage, three eating patterns were found through LCA in article 1: "Inadequate" (32.49% of the children), composed of children who presented a higher probability of ultra-processed food consumption;"Mixed" (54.63%), in which most of the children were allocated; "Traditional" (12.87%), considered the healthiest, because it presents lower probabilities of ultra-processed food consumption.In article 2, which sought to assess the association between eating patterns and other factors to asthma,a prevalence of 13.8% of active asthma was found. After adjusted analysis, the following associated factors were identified: maternal history of asthma OR = 2.58 (95% CI: 1.55-4.29), male OR = 1.60 (95% CI: 1.01-2.54) and exclusive breastfeeding up to 6 months OR = 0.61 (0.38-0.98). There was no statistically significant association between eating patterns and asthma OR = 1.30 (95% CI: 0.79-2.14).