Long-standing interest has been put on health effects of nutritional factors through biological mechanisms involved in pathways including ROS, inflammation, hormones/energy metabolism, gene expression regulation, immunity, and cell cycle/proliferation. Nutritional factors played important roles in noncommunicable diseases including diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases, which accounted for almost 70% of all deaths worldwide. In addition to the role of individual food items, analysis of dietary patterns has gained increasing importance because specific nutrients are consumed across a wide range of foods and complex food components can have competing biological effects. Therefore, integrated analyses of dietary patterns that reflect more diverse and multi-dimensional nutritional compositions are needed to relate to health outcomes and facilitate translational dietary recommendations. Additionally, interactions between genetic variation in nutritional metabolism and dietary factors have been shown for risk of chronic diseases that deserve greater attention. Beyond above-mentioned beneficial chronic disease health associations, it is of timely importance to determine whether these nutritional factors are related to risk of COVID-19 and have any preventative potential against infection. The role of diet and vitamin and micronutrient supplements has been the focus of chronic disease etiologic and prevention research for decades through prospective cohorts, nested case-control biochemical studies, and controlled trials. In the field of cancer for example, there has been interest in whether and how vitamin D impacts risk and survival, and most recently interest in vitamin D for prevention of respiratory infections including COVID-19 has re-emerged. In addition, how genetic variation modifies nutritional and biochemical metabolism and influences vitamin supplementation effects on chronic disease and risk of COVID-19 and prognosis remain unknown.
The overarching aim of this proposal is to comprehensively explore associations of dietary factors with risk of COVID-19, chronic diseases and mortality. Specifically, we aim to: 1) Examine associations of Healthy Eating Patterns, single nutritional factors and dietary supplement use with risk of COVID-19, cancer, diabetes and mortality; 2) Assess whether genetic variants associated with nutritional and biochemical metabolism can modify the observed associations. 3) Study whether key lifestyle risk factors and racial/ethnic groups can modify the observed associations. Project duration will be 36 months. Our findings may provide evidence that dietary factors and possible modification may impact long-term health outcomes as well as risk of and prognosis for COVID-19 infection. The proposal should also facilitate development of general dietary guidelines, promote translational findings into dietary recommendations and contribute to ongoing informed public health practices.