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RELIABILITY AND RELATIVE CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF A FOOD FREQUENCY QUESTIONNAIRE: THE GRONINGEN INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE NUTRITIONAL QUESTIONNAIRES (GINQ-FFQ)

Corien Stevens 1,2, Iris Barth 1,2, Gerard Dijkstra 2,1, Marjo Campmans-Kuijpers 2,1

Affiliations

1 University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

2 University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

Summary

AI Generated

The Groningen IBD Nutritional Questionnaires (GINQ-FFQ) showed acceptable correlation with a 3-day food diary for assessing dietary intake in 143 inflammatory bowel disease patients.

The GINQ-FFQ is a food frequency questionnaire designed to assess dietary intake of 218 food items using 121 questions in patients with IBD over the previous month.
Spearman correlations between GINQ-FFQ and 3-day food diary ranged from 0.39 to 0.63 for macronutrients and 0.20 to 0.51 for micronutrients, meeting acceptable thresholds (0.20-0.49 acceptable, ≥0.50 good).
Bland-Altman analysis for energy intake showed good agreement with a mean difference of -84.87 kcal and limits of agreement from -1358 to 1188 kcal.
The study included 143 patients from the 1000IBD cohort (79 Crohn's disease, 57 ulcerative colitis, 7 IBD-unclassified; median age 50 years).
The GINQ-FFQ is considered an acceptable dietary assessment tool for IBD populations when compared to a 3-day food diary.

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This summary was generated by an AI large language model based on the content transcript. It is for informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for clinical judgment. Always rely on your professional expertise and the full clinical context when making clinical decisions.

Abstract

Introduction

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is an auto-immune disease comprising Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) and colitis-type unclassified (IBD-U). Studies have shown that diet plays an important role in the development and course of IBD.
To improve assessment of dietary intake in the IBD population, our research group recently developed the Groningen IBD Nutritional Questionnaires (GINQ-FFQ), a food frequency questionnaire designed to assess dietary intake of 218 food items using 121 questions in patients with IBD over the previous month. This questionnaire needs to be validated.

Aims & Methods

This study aims to test the reliability and relative construct validity of the GINQ-FFQ.
In total 143 patients (CD N=79, UC N=57, IBD-U N=7); median age 50 [IQR: 38,6]) of the 1000IBD cohort completed both the GINQ-FFQ and a 3-Day Food Diary (3FD).
Intake from the GINQ-FFQ was calculated using the FFQ-Tool^TM, which was linked to the Dutch food composition database (NEVO). Intake from the 3FD was calculated using a Dutch nutritional calculation tool (Evry, version 2.3.7.0), that converts food consumption into nutrient intake using the same NEVO database.
Nutritional data with implausible energy intake (over- and underreporting) were excluded.
Spearman’s rho was performed to assess the correlation between nutrients of the GINQ-FFQ and 3FD (using 0.20-0.49 acceptable and ≥0.50 good outcome). A Bland-Altman (B&A) plot was performed to visualise level of agreement for energy intake (kcal).

Results

For macronutrients Spearman’s rho varied between 0.39 and 0.63; For micronutrients between 0.20 and 0.51 (Table 1).
B&A plot for kcal showed good agreement (mean difference of -84.87, limits of agreement [-1358, 1188]).

Table 1: Spearman correlation between 3FD and GINQ-FFQ
	3FD		GINQ-FFQ		Spearman (rho)
Nutrient	Median	[IQR]	Median	[IQR]	Spearman (rho)
Energy (kcal)	2120	[1798, 2482]	1990	[1567, 2481]	0.49
Carbohydrate total (g) - Fibre (g)	216 20	[176, 258] [17, 26]	210 21	[173, 265] [16, 27]	0.50 0.43
Protein total (g) - Animal protein (g) - Plant protein (g)	82 50 32	[69,102] [38, 65] [26, 39]	74 45 30	[61, 92] [33, 59] [23, 40]	0.44 0.44 0.42
Fat total (g) - MUFA (g) - PUFA (g) - Saturated fat total (g)	82 31 16 31	[66, 102] [25, 37] [13, 20] [26, 41]	84 29 16 31	[65, 105] [22, 37] [11, 22] [25, 40]	0.43 0.41 0.39 0.49
Alcohol (g)	0	[0, 5]	1.4	[0.1, 6.0]	0.63
Vitamin A (ug) Vitamin B2 (mg) Vitamin B11 (ug) Vitamin B12 (ug) Vitamin C (mg)	447 1.54 263 4.34 90	[334, 650] [1.14, 1.98] [206, 327] [2.90, 5.81] [57, 144]	512 1.27 227 4.02 83	[359, 718] [1.03, 1.69] [175, 228] [2.82, 5.24] [51, 110]	0.51 0.31 0.20 0.38 0.42
Calcium (mg) Magnesium (mg) Iron total (mg)	1037 325 10.5	[820,1315] [280,400] [8.6, 12.8]	912 325 9.91	[693, 1247] [252, 420] [7.89, 12.27]	0.39 0.49 0.41

_{Abbreviations: 3FD; 3 Day Food Diary. GINQ-FFQ; Groningen Inflammatory Bowel Disease Nutritional Questionnaires.
MUFA; Monounsaturated fatty acids. PUFA; polyunsaturated fatty acids. n3; omega-3 fatty acids. n6; omega-6 fatty acids.}

Conclusion

Compared to a 3FD, the GINQ-FFQ is an acceptable dietary assessment tool.

References

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Peters V, Alizadeh BZ, de Vries JH, Dijkstra G, Campmans-Kuijpers MJ. Nutritional Assessment in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)—Development of the Groningen IBD Nutritional Questionnaires (GINQ). Nutrients. 2019 Nov 12;11(11):2739.
Imhann F, Van der Velde KJ, Barbieri R, et al. The 1000IBD project: multi-omics data of 1000 inflammatory bowel disease patients; data release 1. BMC Gastroenterol 2019;19:5.
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