Could An Apple A Day Decrease Prescription Use?

No evidence supports the proverbial saying that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. However, the small number of US adults who consume an apple every day seemed to require fewer prescription medications, according to a recent study.

For the cross-sectional study, researchers evaluated 8399 eligible adults (18 years and older) who completed a 24-hour dietary recall questionnaire that properly showed how the quantity of food they consumed reflected their usual daily diet.
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“The primary outcome measure was success at ‘keeping the doctor away,’ measured as no more than 1 visit (self-reported) to a physician during the past year; secondary outcomes included successful avoidance of other health care services (eg, no overnight hospital stays, visits to a mental health professional, or prescription medications),” said the study’s authors.

Of the participants, researchers determined that 753 adult apple eaters (9.0%) typically consumed at least 1 small apple (or 149 g of raw apple) every day.

After comparing the apple eaters to 7646 non-apple consumers (91.0%), researchers discovered that those who ate apples had higher education attainment, were less likely to smoke, and were more likely to be from a racial or ethnic minority.

Further, those who ate apples did not need as many prescription medications (48% vs 42%) or visits to the doctors compared to those who did not eat an apple every day (39% vs 33.9%).

The investigators noted that after adjusting for sociodemocraphic and heath-related factors, the decreased number of doctor visits were not longer statistically significant and the decreased use of prescriptions were borderline significant.

The complete study is published in the March issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

-Michelle Canales Butcher

Reference:

Davis MA, Bynum JP, Sirovich BE. Association between apple consumption and physician visits appealing the conventional wisdom that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. JAMA Intern Med. 2015 March [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.5466.