The association of diet quality scores with the adverse pregnancy outcomes

Abstract Gestational weight gain (GWG) and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), as two major adverse pregnancy outcomes, could be affected by diet patterns, and GWG also influenced GDM. Therefore, we aimed to explore the four diet quality scores and two adverse pregnancy outcomes in a more macroscopic way. 667 women for GWG part and 333 women for GDM part who were pregnant from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), aged 20 to 44 years, were involved in this study, respectively. Four diet quality scores including dietary inflammatory index (DII), dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), Healthy Eating In-dex-2015 (HEI-2015), and Alternative Healthy Eating Index–2010 (AHEI-2010) were chosen in this study. We found that higher HEI-2015 and AHEI-2010 were associated with lower risk of GWG, especially for advanced maternal age. Lower DII and higher DASH were associated with lower risk of GDM. These associations were robust after excluding the diabetic patients. For pregnant women with GWG, DASH was negatively associated with the risk of GDM. Summarily, adherence of healthy dietary pattern associated with decreased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes. We recommended advanced maternal age women to adherence of HEI-2015 and AHEI-2010 to prevent GWG. For pregnant women with GWG, adherence of DASH was benefit to GDM.