Asthma and Dietary Intake of Fish, Seaweeds, and Fatty Acids in Korean Adults

The dietary intake of fish and fatty acid may influence the risk of asthma, yet epidemiological research remains controversial and inconclusive. We examined the association between asthma and the dietary intake of fish, seaweeds, and fat in a Korean population, aged 19 to 64 years, using the data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) 2013-2016 (n = 13,038). The prevalence of doctor-diagnosed asthma and medication prescribed asthma were 2.5% and 1.0%, respectively. The subjects with medication prescribed asthma had significantly lower consumption of seaweeds (p = 0.0110) and lower n3/n6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) (p = 0.0275) as compared to subjects without medication prescribed asthma. Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that the odds ratio (OR) (95% confidence interval, CI) of doctor-diagnosed asthma in the highest quartile were 0.63 (0.41-0.97) and 0.66 (0.44-1.00) for fish and seaweeds respectively, compared to the lowest quartile after adjusting confounding factors. Furthermore, there were significant inverse associations between medication prescribed asthma and seaweeds [OR (95% CI) = 0.37 (0.19-0.70)], n-3 PUFA [OR (95% CI) = 0.43 (0.21-0.89)] and n3/n6 [OR (95% CI) = 0.47 (0.22-0.99)] intake after adjusting for confounding factors. These results suggest, that the higher consumption of fish and seaweed and the high ratio of n-3 to n-6 PUFA may be associated with a lower prevalence of asthma.