Association between cured meat intake and asthma symptoms

<b>Background:</b> Previous studies have suggested that cured meat may adversely affect lung health, but data on asthma remains sparse. The magnitude of the cured meat-asthma association may depend on other factors, which influence pulmonary oxidant/antioxidant balance and inflammation, such as obesity, smoking or unhealthy diet. To our knowledge, these concepts have not been examined. <b>Aims:</b> to study the association between cured meat intake and the asthma symptom score in a French cohort, and to investigate the combined effect of body mass index, smoking, and overall diet quality. <b>Methods:</b> We included 35,380 adults from the NutriNet-Santé cohort who completed standardized web-questionnaires on asthma and diet. We examined the association between asthma symptom score (5 questions) and cured meat intake (0,&lt;2,2-5,&gt;5 servings/week). We examined the combined effect of BMI, smoking, diet quality with cured meat by including a combined variable in the model where the reference group constituted normal BMI (&lt;25 kg/m2) never-smoking highest diet quality participants in the lowest cured meat intake (&lt;2serv/we). <b>Results:</b> Participants were aged 54 on average (women: 75%, smokers: 49%, BMI≥25: 32%), and 25% reported ≥1 symptoms. After adjustment for confounders, higher intake of cured meat was significantly associated with higher asthma symptoms: OR(95% CI) =1.15(1.04-1.27) in women; 1.23(1.01-1.50) in men. Compared with the reference group, OR for participants with a BMI≥25, ever smokers, the lowest diet quality and the highest cured meat intake were 2.14(1.84-2.49) in women; 2.78(2.03-3.82) in men. <b>Conclusion:</b> These data support the hypothesis that cured meat may worsen the adverse effects of obesity, smoking and unhealthy diet on asthma.