Mutagenesis Unit, Institute for Medical Research and Occupational Health, Zagreb, Croatia.
Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Laboratory for Analytical Chemistry, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia.
Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2023;63(18):3189-3221. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2021.1986464. Epub 2021 Oct 11.
The health benefit of a vegetarian diet is still under debate as it may result in a higher intake of some beneficial micronutrients, while others may be reduced, thus influencing various metabolic pathways and health-related biomarkers. This scoping review discusses inflammatory, oxidative and DNA damage status in vegetarians and vegans compared to omnivores. Most of the reviewed studies indicated favorable effects of a vegetarian diet on oxidative status compared to omnivores but did not clearly associate particular dietary habits to genome damage. The evidence on the effect of vegetarian diet on the inflammatory and immunological biomarkers is poor, which could at least partly be explained by methodological constraints such as small sample size, short duration of vegetarianism and inconsistent definitions of the omnivorous diet. The only inflammatory biomarker that seems to be associated with the vegetarian diet was inflammatory mediator C-reactive protein, which in several studies showed lower values in vegetarians as compared to omnivores. There were very few studies on immunological markers and the results on the difference between vegetarians and omnivores were inconclusive. Although several biomarkers involved in oxidative stress and inflammation showed a beneficial association with the vegetarian diet, further research in well-defined and sufficiently sized cohorts is needed to provide more evidence.
素食对健康的益处仍存在争议，因为素食可能导致某些有益的微量营养素摄入增加，而其他营养素可能减少，从而影响各种代谢途径和与健康相关的生物标志物。本范围综述讨论了与杂食者相比，素食者和严格素食者的炎症、氧化和 DNA 损伤状况。大多数综述研究表明，与杂食者相比，素食对氧化状态有有利影响，但并未明确将特定的饮食习惯与基因组损伤联系起来。关于素食对炎症和免疫生物标志物影响的证据不足，这至少部分可以用方法学限制来解释，例如样本量小、素食时间短以及杂食者饮食的定义不一致。似乎与素食有关的唯一炎症生物标志物是炎症介质 C 反应蛋白，在几项研究中，素食者的 C 反应蛋白值低于杂食者。关于免疫标志物的研究很少，素食者和杂食者之间的差异结果尚无定论。尽管几种涉及氧化应激和炎症的生物标志物与素食呈有益关联，但仍需要在明确且足够大的队列中进行进一步研究，以提供更多证据。
