Diet, Nutrition and Paediatric Asthma: Emerging Trends

Ekpor Anyimah-Ackah*, Auswell Amfo-Antiri and Guy Eshun

Background: Childhood asthma keeps rising, and what lands on the dinner table may stoke or soothe young airways. Understanding the dietary influences shaping this epidemic is both a public health priority and a culinary question.

Objective: This scoping review charts the past decade of research exploring how whole diets, individual nutrients, and body weight affect asthma in children while highlighting culturally grounded dietary interventions.

Methods: We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Scoping Review guidance. Searches of eight databases and gray literature captured observational and experimental studies published from January 2015 to May 2025 on diet and asthma in individuals from birth to eighteen years. Two reviewers screened, extracted, and assessed quality.

Results: Plant-rich patterns, including Mediterranean and Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) menus, were associated with fifteen to fifty percent fewer wheezing episodes, while fast food, sugar-sweetened drinks, and other ultra-processed foods coincided with more attacks and hospital visits. Six trials that boosted fruits, vegetables, fish, or weight loss improved symptoms within six months; high-dose vitamin D and other single-nutrient pills rarely helped.

Conclusion: Diet quality and body weight are modifiable determinants of paediatric asthma worldwide. Clinicians should incorporate nutrition and weight counselling into asthma management, and public health policies that promote affordable, minimally processed foods may lessen disease burden. Future multicentre trials should test comprehensive dietary interventions and clarify microbiome-mediated mechanisms. Standardised outcome sets will enhance comparability across future nutritional trials worldwide and registries.

Keywords:

Published on: Jul 8, 2025 Pages: 1-7

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/oja.000021
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