Adherence to DASH Dietary Pattern and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome: A Case-control Study

Abstract Objective: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) as one of the endocrine and metabolic abnormalities is prevalent in reproductive-aged women. This study aimed to investigate the relevance between adherence to the DASH diet and PCOS.Results: This is an age and BMI-matched case-control study including (n=108) new diagnosis PCOS women as a case group and women without PCOS as a control group (n=108). Also, the validated 168-item food frequency questionnaire was used to determine the usual dietary intake. The method of Fung et al. was used to calculate the DASH score. Moreover, logistic regression was assessed to evaluate the relationship between adherence to the DASH diet and the odds of PCOS. After adjustment for potential confounders, an increase in adherence to the DASH diet significantly reduced the odds of PCOS (OR for the highest vs. lowest quartile = 0.18; 95% CI 0.07, 0.47). There was a significant decreasing trend in the odds of PCOS across increasing quintiles of the DASH diet (p-trend <0.001). The results showed that adherence to the DASH diet could reduce the odds of PCOS by 82 percent. It’s worth noting that more prospective studies are required to confirm the findings of the current study.