Dietary Inflammatory Index: Evaluation

The DII is a scoring system in evaluating the potential inflammatory levels of dietary components, which was developed by Shivappa through literature review (7 (link)). DII calculates the inflammation effects of dietary consumption from 45 nutrients. The calculation of DII is based on the addition of each component's score from the diet consumed in 24 h, including the score from the pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory diet. Briefly, the Z score is a value obtained by subtracting the Global daily mean intake and divided by the standard deviation, and then, the value is converted to a percentile score, followed by doubling each percentile score and subtracting “1” to achieve a symmetrical distribution. Then, the percentile value is multiplied by the corresponding “overall inflammation effect score.” By summing each DII score, we can achieve an individual “overall DII score.” In this study, 26 nutrients were used for the calculation of the DII score, which includes alcohol, vitamin B12/B6, β-carotene, caffeine, carbohydrate, cholesterol, energy, total fat, fiber, folic acid, Fe, Mg, MUFA, niacin, n-3 fatty acids, protein, PUFA, riboflavin, saturated fat, Se, thiamin, vitamins A/C/E, and Zn. Importantly, even if the nutrients applied for the calculation of DII is <30, the DII scores are still available (7 (link)).