ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Clinical Nutrition
Pro-inflammatory Dietary Patterns and Their Association with Cardiovascular Disease and Pancreatic Cancer in a Hospital Population: A Cross-Sectional Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of cardiovascular medicine, Affiliated Jinhua Hospital Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Jinhua, China
- 2Nursing Department，the second hospital of Jinhua, Jinhua, China
- 3Department of Gastroenterology, Huai'an Second People's Hospital, The Affiliated Huai'an Hospital of Xuzhou Medical University, Huai'an, China
- 4Huai'an Clinical Medical College of Jiangsu Universit, Huai'an, China
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Objective: To examine whether a concise, clinic-feasible Patient Inflammatory Diet Score (PIDS) relates to prevalent pancreatic cancer and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a hospital population, and to explore associations with systemic inflammation. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study among 401 adults ( ≥40 years) attending cardiology, gastroenterology, or oncology services (2018–2022). A 10–12-minute questionnaire captured sociodemographics, lifestyle, and habitual intake of pro-and anti-inflammatory food groups to derive the PIDS (quartiles). Pancreatic cancer and CVD were ascertained from de-identified electronic records; high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) indexed systemic inflammation. Robust Poisson models estimated prevalence ratios (PRs) across PIDS quartiles with prespecified adjustments and subgroup/sensitivity analyses. Results: Pancreatic cancer was present in 24 participants (6.0 %); CVD in 111 (27.7 %). Relative to Q1, fully adjusted PRs for pancreatic cancer were 0.81 (95 % CI 0.32–2.06), 0.94 (0.39–2.27), and 1.09 (0.45–2.65) for Q2–Q4 (p-trend = 0.79); the per-SD estimate was 1.03 (0.81–1.31). PIDS showed no material association with prevalent CVD (Q4 vs Q1, PR 1.08; 0.76–1.54; p-trend = 0.61). Correlation with hsCRP was weak (ρ = 0.09; p = 0.08), and findings were consistent across sex, age, and BMI strata, alternative PIDS categorizations, exclusion of hsCRP > 10 mg·L⁻¹, and restriction to participants without CVD. No synergistic effects were observed for joint PIDS–CVD categories. Conclusion: In this pragmatic clinical setting, a brief, food-based inflammatory diet score did not discriminate cross-sectional differences in pancreatic-cancer prevalence or CVD, nor did it correlate meaningfully with hsCRP. These null findings bound plausible effect sizes and support the need for larger, prospective studies with richer dietary phenotyping and biomarker integration.
Keywords: Cardiometabolic risk, cardiovascular disease, Pancreatic Cancer, Patient Inflammatory Diet Score (PIDS), Pro-inflammatory dietary pattern, systemic inflammation
Received: 15 Jul 2025; Accepted: 08 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jin, Liu, Tong, Tang, Liang and Zeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Feng Liang
Lingling Zeng
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