There is an urgent need to implement population-based actions to prevent diabetes mellitus (DM) in China. However, the current knowledge is limited on a prospective association of seafood intake with DM risk in Chinese adults. We aimed to determine the association between seafood consumption and the incident DM in a nationwide cohort of Chinese populations. A prospective cohort study of 104,816 participants, free of DM, aged ≥ 40 years across various geographical regions in China was conducted at baseline (China Cardiometabolic Disease and Cancer study). Habitual consumptions of seafood were assessed using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, and DM was diagnosed according to the WHO 1999 criteria. Primary outcomes were the incident DM, presented as hazard rations (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) that were examined with Cox proportional model with adjustments for relevant covariates across quartiles of seafood consumptions, with the lowest quartile as the reference. Dose-response analyses were evaluated using the restricted cubic spline regression with tests for nonlinearity. During the mean follow-up period of 3.60 years, 7,105 incident DM cases were present among the 104,816 participants. Participants at the highest quartile of seafood-consumption amount had a lower risk of DM than those at the lowest (HR: 0.87, 95% CI: 0.80–0.94). There is a steep decrease in the risk of DM with the increasing consumption of seafood within the cumulative amount of 200.00 g/week, which further strengthened gradually thereafter (P for nonlinearity < 0.001). In the middle-aged, elderly Chinese population, higher seafood consumption was nonlinearly associated with a lower risk of incident DM, and the cutoff amount of 200.00 g/week was appropriate.
Hu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.