High Carbohydrate Intakes May Predict More Inflammatory Status Than High Fat Intakes in Pre-Menopause Women With Overweight or Obesity: A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract ObjectiveUntil now, studies on the association between dietary carbohydrate and fat intakes and inflammation have indicated conflicting results. We evaluated the association of fat and carbohydrate intakes with inflammatory markers in pre-menopause women with overweight or obesity.RESULTS360 women with BMI ≥ 25 participated in this study. The levels of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) indicated a significantly increasing trend across tertiles of total dietary carbohydrate (P=0.048). We found that the levels of galectin-3 were negatively associated with dietary carbohydrate in adjusted model (β= -0.28, P=0.04). In addition, the levels of MCP-1 and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) were positively correlated to carbohydrate amount in the diet (β= 0.23, P=0.002 and β= 0.29, P=0.002 for MCP-1 for crude and adjusted models, respectively, β= 0.57, P=0.03 and β= 1.23, P=0.003 for TGF-β for crude and adjusted models, respectively). No significant relationship was observed between inflammatory parameters and total fat intake (P>0.05). However, there was borderline significant negative association between total fat intake and TGF-β level in adjusted model (β= -0.95, P=0.05). Therefore, high carbohydrate diet may increase inflammation in women with obesity. To achieve similar results, it is necessary to perform more observational and clinical trial studies in this issue.