Dietary fatty acid intakes are related to the risk of ulcerative colitis: a case-control study.

Introduction: The role of dietary fatty acids in ulcerative colitis (UC) pathogenesis has been shown in animal models; however, human studies are rare. We hypothesized that there might be a relationship between dietary fatty acid composition and the risk of developing incident UC.

Material And Methods: Overall, 62 new cases of UC and 124 healthy age and sex-matched controls were studied. Information on usual diet was measured by a validated country-specific food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Logistic regression analysis adjusting for potential confounding variables was carried out to compare dietary fatty acid intakes between cases and controls.

Results: We found positive associations between dietary intake of total fat (P value for trend <0.01), oleic acid (P value for trend <0.01), saturated fatty acid (SAFA) (P value for trend = 0.02), total polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) (P value for trend = 0.04), and trans fat (P value for trend <0.01).

Conclusion: Our results showed that higher consumptions of total fats, oleic acid, SAFAs, total PUFAs, trans fat, MUFAs, and linoleic acid are significantly associated with increased risk for UC; however, no statistically significant associations were detected between the risk of disease and n-3 PUFAs and cholesterol intake.