Associations between dietary fiber intake and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease and cancer: a prospective study

OBJECTIVE: Several studies suggest that dietary fiber intake may reduce mortality risk, but this might depend on the fiber types and the evidence regarding the role of soluble fiber or insoluble fiber on death risk remain limited and inconsistent. Therefore, this study aimed to comprehensively evaluate multiple types of dietary fiber intake on mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease and cancer in the large-scale Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer (PLCO) Screening Trial. METHODS: A multivariate Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: This study finally included 86,642 participants with 17,536 all-cause deaths, 4842 cardiovascular deaths and 5760 cancer deaths identified after a total of 1,444,068 follow-up years. After adjusting for potential confounders, dietary total fiber intake was statistically significantly inversely associated with all-cause death (Q5 vs Q1: HR 0.71, 95% CI 0.66–0.75; P for trend < 0.001), cardiovascular death (Q5 vs Q1: HR 0.73, 95% CI 0.65–0.83; P for trend < 0.001) and cancer mortality (Q5 vs Q1: HR 0.77, 95% CI 0.69–0.86; P for trend < 0.001). Similar results were observed for both insoluble and soluble fiber intake. Restricted cubic spline model analysis suggested that there was a nonlinear association of dietary fiber intake with mortality risk (all P for nonlinearity < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: In this large nationally representative sample of US adult population, intakes of total fiber, soluble fiber, and insoluble fiber were associated with lower risks of all-cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12967-022-03558-6.