Excessive Cured Meat Intake May Be Harmful to COPD Patients

By definition, excessive anything is harmful.

Excessive consumption of cured meat is associated with an increased risk for hospital readmission among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), report Jordi de Batlle, BMedBiol, from the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, Hospital del Mar Research Institute, the CIBER Epidemiología y Salud Pública, and the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues. Results from their study were scheduled to be published online March 8 in the European Respiratory Journal.

The goal of the Phenotype and Course of COPD Project (PAC-COPD) study was to assess the association between dietary intake of cured meat and risk for COPD readmission among patients with COPD. The researchers calculated the association between cured meat intake and COPD admissions using parametric regression survival-time models.

Researchers demonstrated that higher cured meat consumption was related to a 2-fold increased risk for COPD readmission (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.02; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.31 - 3.12; P = .001), after adjusting for age, forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1), and total calorie intake. In addition, the time to the first COPD readmission was longer in patients with low cured meat intake (P = .028).

Especially when your goal was to prove an association.

Remember, association is not the same as cause and effect.