Efficacy of a low-fat vegan diet for the reduction of asthma symptoms: A controlled trial.

摘要

The aim of this project was to utilize a controlled design to examine the effect of adopting a plant based diet for reducing asthma symptoms in a sample of adults. Participants were asked to maintain a vegan diet for eight weeks and to attend weekly sessions pertaining to the intervention (i.e., vegan cooking classes and asthma education), which were conducted to promote vegan diet adherence. The objective was to compare asthma symptom ratings, quality of life, and spirometry measures in the diet condition to those of a wait list control condition. The investigators hypothesized that individuals in the vegan diet condition would experience improved pulmonary function and report diminished asthma symptom severity and frequency, and reduced medication use. ANCOVAs of change scores were performed, covarying out the effects of baseline performance. It was found that participants had statistically significant improvements in medication consumption, symptom frequency, and symptom severity. While percent improvement scores indicated important changes in the treatment group, they were not statistically significant. Strengths and weaknesses of the study, clinical implications, as well as directions for future research were discussed.