The Combined Effects of IgA-Mediated Immunity and Rice Consumption in Suppressing COVID-19 Infections

Volume 3 - Issue 2

Shaw Watanabe¹* and Kazumoto Inuma²

• ¹Asia Pacific Clinical Nutrition Society, Japan
• ²Ricetech Corporation, Japan

Received: July 25, 2020;   Published: August 05, 2020

*Corresponding author: Shaw Watanabe, Life science Promoting Association, Asia Pacific Clinical Nutrition Society, Japan

DOI: 10.32474/SJFN.2020.03.000158

 

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Abstract

The number of COVID-19 cases in 19 major countries on 5 continents revealed a strong negative correlation with rice consumption per capita. As previously reported, the overall frequency of IgA-deficiency is inversely correlated with COVID-19 infection. We therefore studied the correlation between rice consumption and IgA-deficiency in a subset of 8 countries for which enough data were available. The results revealed a negative correlation with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.55. To further confirm the relationship between rice consumption and COVID-19 cases, we selected 9 Asian countries. The result was the same as described, and countries with the rice consumption more than 80-100kg/capita/year showed the lower incidence. In Japan, the specific COVID-19 infection rate by age groups was investigated, in relation with average rice consumption by age categories. The crude correlation between rice consumption and COVID-19 incidence was -0.59, but the age-adjusted correlation became -0.81. These suggested that SARS-CoV-2 infection is strongly affected by staple foods, and that rice dieters have a stronger innate immunity toward COVID-19. Improvement of agricultural policies and eating habits, especially the promotion of brown rice food and rice bran, are expected to be useful strategies against to counter the coronavirus pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; Innate immunity; Rice consumption; IgA deficiency; Statistics

Abstract| Introduction| Statistical Analysis| Discussion and Conclusions| Acknowledgement| COI| Reference|