Healthy Eating Index in Patients With Cataract: A Case-Control Study

BACKGROUND: Nutritional factors play an important role in cataract disease and the healthy eating index (HEI) is a unique approach to study the relationships between diet and diseases. OBJECTIVES: The current study aimed to evaluate and compare healthy eating index among the patients with cataract and healthy individuals. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This case-control study was conducted on 97 patients with cataract and 198 healthy people (as a control group) in Iran. Individuals were selected by the convenience sampling method and the food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was completed for them. At first, HEI was calculated and then the HEI scores were compared in cataract patients and healthy individuals. RESULTS: The analysis of FFQ showed that the scores of vegetables (7.81 v. 10), nutritional variation (5.5 v. 7) and sodium (2 v. 6) groups (P < 0.001) were significantly lower among the patients with cataract than the healthy individuals. Also this significant difference was observed in the scores of total HEI and fruits (respectively 73.26 v.79.30 and 7.1 v. 9.8) (P < 0.01). On the other hand, the scores of saturated fatty acids (10 v. 9; P = 0.02), total fat (8 v. 7; P = 0.004) and cereals (10 v. 10; P < 0.001) were higher among the patients with cataract than the healthy individuals. The comparison of dietary intake among all types of cataract shows that the scores of the meat group were significantly higher in the patients with nuclear cataract and mixed cataract than the ones with posterior cataract (respectively 9.4 v. 6.5 and 9 v. 6.5) (P = 0.02). In addition, after adjusting the confounding factors the results showed that the HEI high score was associated with reducing the risk of coming down with cataract (OR = 0.18, CI: 95%, P < 0.001, 0.08 - 0.41). CONCLUSIONS: The results of the current study suggest that increasing the quality of the diet calculated according to HEI can reduce the risk of coming down with cataract.