Associations of Dietary Patterns, Daily Nutrient Intakes, and Food-Group Intakes with Hyperglycemia in Patients Undergoing Chemotherapy.

Background/

Objectives

Hyperglycemia can compromise anticancer treatment, leading to treatment delay or discontinuation. Identifying factors associated with hyperglycemia is therefore important. We aimed to examine associations between hyperglycemia and dietary patterns, food-group and nutrient intakes, and clinical and behavioral factors in patients undergoing chemotherapy.

Methods

This cross-sectional survey assessed 176 patients with cancer undergoing chemotherapy at a university hospital in South Korea. Data were collected from April 2024 to March 2025 and analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square or Fisher's exact tests, t-tests or Mann-Whitney U tests, and logistic regression.

Results

Hyperglycemia was observed in 26.7% of participants. In adjusted analyses, the Korean side-dish dietary pattern (odds ratio [OR] = 0.30, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.14-0.65, per 1 standard deviation increase in the pattern score), higher physical activity (highly active: OR = 0.06, 95% CI 0.01-0.31, active: OR = 0.13, 95% CI 0.04-0.40), and higher serum albumin levels (OR = 0.17, 95% CI 0.03-0.89) were associated with lower odds of hyperglycemia. Higher intakes of oils/fats, vegetables, eggs, and seaweed were associated with lower odds, whereas higher grain intake was associated with higher odds. All these associations remained significant after false discovery rate (FDR) correction. Because no individual nutrient remained significantly associated with hyperglycemia after FDR correction, nutrient-level findings were considered exploratory.

Conclusions

Hyperglycemia was associated with the Korean side-dish dietary pattern, several food-group intakes, physical activity, and serum albumin. Given the observational design, these findings indicate associations rather than causal effects and warrant confirmation in prospective studies.