Inflammation is associated with the development and progression of a number of diseases. In particular, inflammation is associated with Western lifestyle diseases including obesity, metabolic syndrome, arthritis, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Mechanistically inflammation can contribute to disease development and progression because inflammation generates free radicals, and if chronic, this can deplete cellular antioxidants and lead to systemic oxidative stress. This can increase the blood levels of inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein. Some evidence suggests that a systemic state of oxidative stress can be detrimental during pregnancy, increasing the risk of early pregnancy loss, prematurity, congenital malformations, foetal growth restriction and preeclampsia. For example, the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein has been shown to be associated with early preterm delivery and pregnancy-induced hypertension in overweight women.
Inflammation can be caused by consumption of low quality pro-inflammatory diets. Inflammation is also associated with reduced pregnancy outcomes. It might therefore be assumed that anti-inflammatory diets are effective at improving pregnancy outcomes. Also anti-inflammatory diets containing fish, low fat meat, dairy products, vegetable oil, nut oil, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables including legumes has been shown to lower the rate of preterm delivery. However, although effective at improving pregnancy outcome, the anti-inflammatory diet did not decrease inflammatory markers. This may suggest that inflammation itself is not the cause of the poorer pregnancy outcomes, but is a confounding variable. Obesity is associated with poor pregnancy outcomes, and is also associated with inflammation. It could be therefore that the obesity is the cause of both the inflammation and the poor pregnancy outcomes. Perhaps high quality anti-inflammatory diets improve the outcomes of pregnancy because they induce weight loss?
A number of studies have investigated the effects of inflammation and pregnancy outcomes. For example, one group of researchers calculated an inflammatory index of the diet of a group of pregnant women and measured the C-reactive protein in their blood. When the pregnancy was complete the researchers found that the inflammatory index of the diet was associated with the body mass index of the infant. In addition, the inflammatory index of the diet was also associated with the C-reactive protein in the second trimester of pregnancy and a lower birth weight in infants born to obese mothers. Therefore an association between inflammatory diets, markers of systemic inflammation and poorer pregnancy outcomes exists. The fact that obese women show a particularly strong association in this regard may be due to the fact that obesity itself is known to be associated with inflammation. It could be therefore that inflammation is associated with poorer pregnancy outcomes because obesity leads to poorer pregnancy outcomes.
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