As prosperity has grown during the past three decades in Saudi Arabia, the tendency toward a more Westernized diet may have increased the risk of allergies and asthma in the arid nation.

In a new study in the journal Thorax, researchers at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, compared about 100 children with wheezing and other asthma symptoms with 200 nonasthmatic children. Participants in the study were from the urban Jeddah area and several rural villages.

The researchers' analysis showed significant associations between a family history of allergies and poor diet in children who had symptoms. Further analysis of dietary components revealed that children with the lowest intakes of vegetables, milk, and vitamin E were at greatest risk of having asthma symptoms, even when the researchers controlled for family size, numbers of infections, level of affluence, and parental smoking.

The trend toward a Western diet is more common in Saudi Arabia's urban areas, the researchers reported, and they suggested that diet may be linked with the increasing asthma prevalence in developed countries.

Source: JAMA, Vol. 284 No. 10, September 13, 2000