Pro-Inflammatory Diets Are Associated with Frailty in an Urban Middle-Aged African American and White Cohort

Diet quality is a modifiable risk factor for frailty, but research on the association of frailty with dietary inflammatory potential is limited. The objective was to determine associations between diet quality assessed by the dietary inflammatory index (DII) with frailty status over time. Participants with both dietary and frailty data from the longitudinal Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) study were used (n = 2901, 43.5% male, 43.8% African American, 48.5 y mean baseline age, with a mean 8.7 y of follow-up). Group-based trajectory modeling identified two frailty (remaining non-frail or being pre-frail/frail over time) and three diet quality trajectory groups (high or medium pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory potentials). Multiple logistic regression found both medium pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory DII trajectory groups, compared to the high pro-inflammatory group, were positively associated with being non-frail over time for the overall sample, both sexes and races. Kaplan–Meier curves and log-rank test revealed anti-inflammatory DII scores were associated with lower risk for being pre-frail or frail. No longitudinal relationship existed between frailty status at baseline and annualized DII change, a check on reverse causality. This study contributes to our current knowledge providing longitudinal evidence of the link between anti-inflammatory DII score with lower frailty risk.