Effectiveness of Dietary Control on The Severity and Frequency of Asthmatic Attacks

Abstract

Background: Bronchial asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disease with episodic, reversible airway obstruction leading to wheezing, breathlessness and cough that significantly affects quality of life and use of health care resources. Although medical therapy has improved, many patients have uncontrolled asthma. In recent years, lifestyle-related factors especially nutrition have been emerged as possible modifiable contributors to airway inflammation and asthma. Nevertheless, data on structured dietary management of asthma severity and frequency of attack are insufficient. Objectives: To assess the impact of dietary management on severity and frequency of asthmatic attacks among adult patients with bronchial asthma, and to determine strength of association between post-intervention outcomes and selected demographic variables. Methods: A quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test control group design was conducted in a respiratory clinic. Three dozen adult patients with confirmed diagnosis of bronchial asthma were included in the study and divided into the study group (n = 30) and control group (n = 30). The study group underwent a preset dietary control intervention combined with medical practice, while the control group received only medical care. The severity of asthma was evaluated based on ACT (a validated tool) to measure the number of asthmatic attacks in 1 month pre-test and post-test. Results: Asthma severity was significantly less and the number of asthmatic attacks were numerically fewer for the study group at post-test than pretest relative to BM adults (p 0.05). In addition, we found n association between post-test asthma severity and frequency with age and sex; but no correlation was detected with BMI. Conclusion: Diet control is effective in addition to the traditional asthma therapy for controlling asthma and most adults with asthma can get benefit from it. Including nutritional counseling as part of asthma standard treatment seems to improve disease control and the patients' health status. More prospective and randomized trials are needed to verify these effects, in order to provide evidence-based dietary recommendations in the control of asthma.

Keywords:

Asthma, Severity, Frequency, ACT, Dietary Control

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