HEALTH UPDATE: low fruit and vitamin C intake tied to asthma risk

People with symptomatic asthma eat less fruit and consume less vitamin C and manganese than people who don't have the disease, a new study shows.
The findings suggest that "diet may be a potentially modifiable risk factor for the development of asthma," Dr N.J. Wareham of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, UK and colleagues write in the medical journal Thorax.
Several antioxidant nutrients have been linked to reduced asthma risk, Wareham and his team note, but it is not clear whether each of these nutrients plays a role in reducing risk or if they instead represent an overall healthier lifestyle.
Asthma patients ate an average of 132.1 grams of fruit daily, compared to 149.1 grams for healthy controls.
Those who ate at least 46.3 grams of citrus daily had about half the risk of having asthma with symptoms compared to those who ate no citrus fruit at all.
Lower intake of both vitamin C and manganese were tied to an increased risk of symptomatic asthma, while symptomatic asthma patients had significantly lower levels of plasma vitamin C than healthy controls.