Dietary Pattern of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Ismailia City

Dahshan, Samia; El-Otla, Sally F.; Ibrahim, Omneya; Rizkalla, Nadia H.

doi:10.21608/scumj.2022.223254

Dietary Pattern of Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Ismailia City

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University, Egypt

² Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University, Egypt

10.21608/scumj.2022.223254

Abstract

Background: The dramatic increase in the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder among children has become a public health concern since school-age children –which are in a critical period of rapid development and growth- are markedly vulnerable to malnutrition and unhealthy diet that negatively affects their brain development. Aim: To identify and assess the association between dietary patterns and ADHD in children. Subjects and Methods: A case-control study was carried out in child psychiatry clinics in Suez Canal University and Suez Canal Authority hospitals in Ismailia city. A total of 433 children 6 to 10 years old: 146 ADHD cases, 141 control siblings, and 146 community control children were studied. A semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire was used to collect data. Principal component analysis was used to extract dietary patterns from the 116 investigated food items. Logistic regression was used to estimate the Odds Ratios of ADHD across tertiles of dietary patterns. Results: Three dietary patterns were extracted: “unhealthy diet”, “unsaturated-fat diet” and “traditional diet”. All the cases were in the 3^rd tertile of the “unhealthy diet” pattern, while the “unsaturated-fat diet” pattern was more consumed by controls. The lowest consumption tertile of this pattern was associated with an OR 4.30 (1.16-15.85) for ADHD. Increasing the intake of the “traditional diet” pattern, after energy adjustment, was associated with reduced OR for ADHD (p=0.001). Conclusion: There is an association between consumption of “unhealthy diet” dietary pattern and ADHD. Also, the “Traditional diet” dietary pattern is protective against ADHD.

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