Can a vegetarian diet help stave off urinary tract infections (UTIs)? Studying Taiwanese buddhists has revealed a link between plant-based foods and a lower risk of UTIs, so researchers are suggesting that this may be the case.
Dr. Chin-Lon Lin — from the Department of Cardiology at the Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital in Chiayi County, Taiwan — is the first author of the study.
UTIs are extremely prevalent. According to worldwide estimates, around 150 million people develop a UTI each year.
Dr. Lin and colleagues explain in their paper that Escherichia coli causes most UTIs. Some recent studies have found that the strains of E. coli that lead to UTIs are different to intestinal strains and normal commensal strains, and they are likely to be present in meat.
So, the researchers hypothesized that because vegetarians avoid eating meat, they should have less exposure to UTI-causing strains of E. coli.
No study so far has examined this matter, write the authors, so Dr. Lin and team set out to do so.
They have now published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.
To examine the link between vegetarian diets and the risk of developing UTIs, the researchers carried out a prospective study of 9,724 Buddhists between 2005 and 2014.
None of the participants had a UTI at the start of the study, but during the 10 year follow-up period, 661 of them developed one.
The researchers assessed the participants’ diets using a food frequency questionnaire.
They then used Cox regression models to examine the link between vegetarian diets and UTI ris