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Sleep quality and Dietary Inflammatory Index among university students: a cross-sectional study

  • Pediatrics • Original Article
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Abstract

Purpose

Evidence indicates that most college students face reduced sleep quality due to unhealthy dietary habits and hectic daily schedules. While the relationship between sleep quality and general health has been the subject of intensive research, little is known about the association between sleep and its relation with the inflammatory potential of the diet until recently. This study aimed to investigate the association between Energy-Adjusted Dietary Inflammatory Index (E-DII®) scores and sleep quality in a group of students from the University of Sharjah (UOS).

Methods

A cross-sectional study design was followed, and convenience sampling was used. Participants were assessed for sleep quality using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), E-DII scores were derived from a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), and physical activity level was measured using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). Chi-square tests and two-sample t tests were used to find an association between E-DII scores and sleep quality.

Results

A total of 379 college students were included in the study of whom 64 % were female and 81% were between 18 and 21 years of age. Two-thirds of participants experienced poor sleep quality. Although results were trending in the hypothesized direction, no significant association was found between E-DII scores and sleep quality. Among the individual components of sleep quality, a direct significant association was found between E-DII scores and day dysfunction (P = 0.03).

Conclusions

These results suggest that a pro-inflammatory diet maybe related to increased day dysfunction among UOS students. Consuming a more anti-inflammatory diet may reduce daytime dysfunction. Further prospective and controlled studies are required to confirm this association, and to explore other attributes and their sequelae on sleep quality.

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Data availability

The original data file is attached in the following link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/odq4bbpopd3wdwz/Sleep%20quality%20and%20DII%20data%20sheet%202282020.xls?dl=0

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participating students for their cooperation. We would also like to thank the Department of Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics, College of Health Sciences, the University of Sharjah for their support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics, College of Health Sciences/Research Institute of Medical and Health Sciences (RIMHS), University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

    Alyaa A. Masaad, Ayesha M. Yusuf, Ayman Z. Shakir, Maryam S. Khan, Sharfa Khaleel, Leila Cheikh Ismail & Mo’ez Al-Islam E. Faris

  2. Nuffield Department of Women’s & Reproductive Health, University of Oxford , Oxford, UK

    Leila Cheikh Ismail

  3. Ministry of Health, Manama, Bahrain

    Haitham A. Jahrami

  4. College of Medicine and Medical Sciences, Arabian Gulf University, Manama, Bahrain

    Haitham A. Jahrami

  5. Cancer Prevention and Control Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    Nitin Shivappa & James R. Hebert

  6. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA

    Nitin Shivappa & James R. Hebert

  7. Department of Nutrition, Connecting Health Innovations LLC, Columbia, SC, USA

    Nitin Shivappa & James R. Hebert

  8. Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, University Sleep Disorders Center, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Ahmed S. Bahammam

  9. The Strategic Technologies Program of the National Plan for Sciences and Technology and Innovation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Ahmed S. Bahammam

Authors
  1. Alyaa A. Masaad
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  2. Ayesha M. Yusuf
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  3. Ayman Z. Shakir
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  4. Maryam S. Khan
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  5. Sharfa Khaleel
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  6. Leila Cheikh Ismail
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  7. Mo’ez Al-Islam E. Faris
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  8. Haitham A. Jahrami
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  9. Nitin Shivappa
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  10. James R. Hebert
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  11. Ahmed S. Bahammam
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Contributions

MF and LI supervised the research and revised the manuscript. AM, AY, AZ, MS, and SK participated in data collection and manuscript writing; HJ performed statistical analyses; AB participated in critical manuscript revision; and JH and NS participated in calculating DII scores and critically revised the manuscript. All authors involved in writing the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mo’ez Al-Islam E. Faris.

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Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Disclosure

Dr. James R. Hébert owns a controlling interest in Connecting Health Innovations LLC (CHI), a company that has licensed the right to his invention of the dietary inflammatory index (DII®) from the University of South Carolina in order to develop computer and smartphone applications for patient counseling and dietary intervention in clinical settings. Dr. Nitin Shivappa is an employee of CHI.

Ethics approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were following the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Consent to participate

Written informed consent was signed by each of the study participants before conducting the study.

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Not applicable

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Masaad, A.A., Yusuf, A.M., Shakir, A.Z. et al. Sleep quality and Dietary Inflammatory Index among university students: a cross-sectional study. Sleep Breath 25, 2221–2229 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-020-02169-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-020-02169-z

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