Diet may affect risk and severity of COVID-19

BMJ: Diet quality and risk and severity of COVID-19: a prospective cohort study

Data on 590,000 participants ... 31,800 developed COVID-19.
Consistent across a range (accounting for other healthy behaviors, social determinants of health and community virus transmission rates), compared with individuals in the lowest quartile of the diet score, those in the highest quartile had:

• a 9% lower risk of developing COVID-19, and
• a 41% lower risk of developing severe COVID-19

Key Takeaways

• A healthy plant-based diet was linked to a lower risk of getting COVID-19.
• Among people with COVID-19, a healthy plant-based diet was linked to a lower risk of experiencing severe symptoms.
• There was a synergistic relationship between poor diet and increased socioeconomic deprivation with COVID-19 risk that was higher than the sum of the risk associated with each factor alone.