Nutrition · 12 Nov 2026
In 61 adolescents with phenylketonuria, diet scores were more anti-inflammatory than in matched peers, and cytokine gaps did not hold after correction
Source: Nutrients
What the research found
A case-control study was published on 12 November 2026. It enrolled 61 adolescents with phenylketonuria, aged 10 to 18, and 61 healthy peers matched on age and sex. That age band is under 40. The abstract does not give the sex split, so the gender tag is all. Diet was scored with a Dietary Inflammatory Index from three-day records and 22 available parameters. Scores were lower in the phenylketonuria group than in controls (minus 1.83, standard deviation 1.35, versus 0.71, standard deviation 1.39, p<0.001). Negative scores, the anti-inflammatory direction, were present in 93.4 percent of the phenylketonuria group. GM-CSF, TNF-alpha, IL-1 beta, and IL-12 (p70) were nominally higher in phenylketonuria (unadjusted p from 0.006 to 0.023). None of those cytokine gaps remained after Bonferroni correction (threshold p<0.00417). In adjusted models, the diet index was not tied to those four cytokines. IL-4 was dropped for analytical concerns. Exploratory, and the cytokine contrast did not survive correction. DOI 10.3390/nu18223750. Not medical advice.
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