Anti-inflammatory diets can lead to significantly lower levels of pain than regular diets for those with rheumatoid arthritis.
During the study, the researchers investigated the impact of potentially anti-inflammatory diets (including Mediterranean, vegetarian, vegan, and ketogenic) on pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis. They used variables such as pain on a visual analogue scale, levels of C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, health assessment questionnaire, disease activity score, tender/swollen joint counts, and measurements of weight, and body mass index. For their sources, the team scoured databases like MEDLINE, Embase, and CINAHL and ended up with 564 unique publications, out of which 12 were used in the systematic review and 7 in the meta-analysis.
The results were obtained using a meta-analysis of eligible randomized controlled trials in RevMan 5. To compute the results, the mean differences or standardized mean differences were employed, and the inverse variance method of pooling was used with a random-effects model. In terms of bias risk assessment, all the studies used were identified as having a high risk of bias. Despite this, the results showed a consistent pattern that the anti-inflammatory diets resulted in significantly lower pain than regular diets for individuals suffering from rheumatoid arthritis.
