Comparison of predictive effect of the dietary inflammatory index and empirically derived food-based dietary inflammatory index on the menopause-specific quality of life and its complications

INTRODUCTION: Menopause, defined as the cessation of menstruation for at least 12 months, is one of the important stages of a woman's life cycle. Some hormonal variations occur during the transition to menopause, which affects women’s quality of life. Recently, the role of dietary factors in alleviating symptoms has been investigated. AIM OF THIS STUDY: We tried to investigate the relationship between dietary inflammatory index (DII), food-based dietary inflammatory index (FDII) and quality of life, and menopausal symptoms, comparing their predictive power and suggesting the best cut-off point. METHODOLOGY: One hundred forty-nine postmenopausal women were included in the cross-sectional study. After collecting data by interview, the desired variables were calculated. Logistic regression and ROC curves were used to investigate the relationship and predictive power of DII and FDII with menopausal symptoms. FINDINGS: We observed that both DII and FDII were significantly associated with the severity of sexual symptoms. The first tertile of DII (OR = 0.252, P-value = 0.002) and FDII (OR = 0.316, P-value = 0.014) had a significantly lower odds ratio for severe to moderate symptoms compared to the third tertile. Both inflammatory indices had significant predictive power in predicting the probability of having severe to moderate poor quality of life (FDII (p-value = 0.004) > DII (p-value = 0.006)) and sexual symptoms (DII (p-value = 0.002) > FDII (p-value = 0.003)). Also, regarding the physical subtype, only FDII (p-value = 0.002) results were significant. CONCLUSION: Both dietary inflammatory indices appear to be suitable for predicting quality of life, but FDII had slightly more predictive power. It seems that the quality of life and severity of menopausal symptoms may be improved, particularly with regard to sexual symptoms, by following an anti-inflammatory diet.