Mediterranean diet and symptom severity in Sjogren’s syndrome

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Source: Frontiers Medicine

Original: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2026.1730536...

Published: 2026-03-04T00:00:00Z

The study examined the effect of the Mediterranean diet on symptom severity in patients with Sjogren's syndrome using the OSDI (Ocular Surface Disease Index) and ESSPRI (Eular Sjogren's Syndrome Patient-Reported Index) scores. It was a cross-sectional observational study with 75 patients with an average age of 50.1 ± 13.3 years, of which 88% were women. Median scores were 5.0 for ESSPRI (IQR 3.0–6.7), 25.0 for OSDI (IQR 10.4–40.6) and 8.0 for MEDAS (IQR 4.5–11.0), where MEDAS assesses adherence to a Mediterranean diet. Spearman's correlation analysis showed a significant negative correlation between MEDAS and OSDI (ρ = -0.78, p < 0.001). No covariate was statistically significant in the ESSPRI model, while treatment showed a positive correlation with OSDI (β = +6.44, 95% CI 0.84 to 12.03; p = 0.025). The Mediterranean diet can serve as a complementary strategy to conventional treatment.