Discordant Associations of Food- and Nutrient-Based Dietary Inflammatory Scores With Cognitive Performance in Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study

The study compared two methods of measuring the inflammatory nature of diet – Food Inflammation Score for Individuals (FISI) and Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) – in relation to cognitive performance in 2,455 adults over 60 years old from the American national survey NHANES from 2011-2014. Results showed that a higher DII score was associated with lower global cognitive performance (a decrease of 0.091 points on a standard scale), while the FISI score did not show this association. The trend across four groups based on DII score was statistically significant. However, neither score substantially improved the ability to distinguish individuals with low cognitive performance. Researchers concluded that these two scores cannot be considered equivalent or interchangeable.