This diet may reduce COVID-19 risk, new research suggests

(CNN) – A healthy diet has long been hailed by some experts as one potentially important factor influencing the risk of COVID-19, or how bad someone’s case gets.But a team of researchers in Indonesia looked into how a specific lifestyle might affect these odds – finding that following the Mediterranean diet may reduce your risk of getting COVID-19, according to a review published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.“There have been numerous studies that heavily associated COVID-19 with inflammation (in the body), while the Mediterranean diet has been long-known for its anti-inflammatory properties,” said the review’s senior author Andre Siahaan, a lecturer and member of the Center of Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of North Sumatra in Indonesia, via email. “Through our study, we reported a link that further strengthened the connection between these two, in line with our hypothesis.”Inflammation has been associated with both the development and severity of COVID-19.Since the coronavirus struck in 2019, there have been more than 775 million reported cases of infection, according to the World Health Organization. That number is still growing, with more than 47,000 cases reported within just the week leading up to Aug. 4 – the most recent statistic from the...