Brown rice improves dietary inflammatory index score, fasting blood glucose level and tumour necrosis factor alpha in diabetes mellitus patients

Abstract

Diet is part of diabetes mellitus (DM)'s pillars, which aim to control blood glucose level. Elevated blood glucose level is associated with inflammation and a greater risk of complications. Brown rice has bioactive compound that can help control blood glucose and inflammation. The use of brown rice in the diet is expected to improve blood glucose levels and inflammation as measured by the dietary inflammatory index (DII) score. This study determined the effect of the brown rice DM diet in improving DII scores, fasting blood glucose, and tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) levels in DM patients. This experimental research was designed with a one group pre and post-test. Samples were taken from 17 people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) who met the inclusion criteria and were given intervention for 3 months. DII data was taken from food intake data using the semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (SQFFQ) which was then calculated using the DII calculation plot. Blood glucose levels were measured using a biochemistry analyser and TNF-α levels using enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA). The results showed that the average DII scores before and after the brown rice intervention were 0.12±0.74 and 1.95±0.24, the average fasting blood glucose level before and after the intervention was 145.82±24.77 mg/dL and 134.12±20.80 mg/dL, and the mean levels of TNF-α before and after the intervention were 193.27±113.05 and 178.95±138.19 n/gL. The results of a different test using a paired T-test showed that there were differences in the provision of brown rice diet on DII scores (p = 0.000), GDP (p = 0.000), and TNF-α (p = 0.041). This study demonstrated that replacing the staple food in a diabetes management (DM) diet with brown rice shifted the diet of type 2 diabetes patients towards an anti-inflammatory pattern, improved fasting blood glucose levels, and decreased TNF-α levels.