Dietary Practices and Beliefs in South Asian Patients with IBD
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Dietary Practices and Beliefs in South Asian Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease
IRAS ID
255488
Contact name
Jimmy K Limdi
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 4 months, 30 days
Research summary
Data on dietary beliefs and behaviour in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are scarce. Credible evidence for the role of diet in the initiation, maintenance and prevention of relapse in IBD is limited and often conflicting. Increasingly, patients with IBD show an interest in how diet may affect their disease and be used to better manage their IBD. Reports show that patients do not feel diet is adequately addressed by healthcare professionals leading to self-imposed dietary restrictions in an attempt to better control their disease. Self-imposed dietary restrictions can impact upon patients nutritional intake and social life.
Recent data from Tomar et al. suggested that these dietary beliefs may be more extreme in the South Asian population with over half of Indian patients believing dietary habits were more important than medicines in the control of IBD. In a study from our group involving an unselected cohort of IBD patients, South Asian patients held stronger views on the role of diet in IBD. They were more likely to believe that diet had a role in disease initiation and placed more restrictions on their diet to prevent relapses. Despite this there are limited data on the dietary practices of South Asian patients with IBD and very limited data exist on South Asian immigrants living in the UK.
This study aims to obtain a better understanding of dietary practices and perceptions in South Asian patients with IBD and explore the information resources used influencing any dietary restrictions. This will be done using a questionnaire regarding dietary restrictions and practices, completed by consenting patients attending the IBD clinic.
We anticipate that our findings will result in a better understanding of self-imposed dietary practices in the South Asian population with IBD resulting in more satisfactory, patient-focused clinical consultations and enabling further research in this field.
REC name
South West - Central Bristol Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/SW/0035
Date of REC Opinion
4 Mar 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion