Ethics approval and consent to participate
The participants who met the inclusion criteria were fully informed about the study’s protocol. The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences (IR.AJUMS.REC.1397.817). Each subject signed the written informed consent. This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
Disclosure: Dr. James R. Hébert owns controlling interest in Connecting Health Innovations LLC (CHI), a company that has licensed the right to his invention of the dietary inflammatory index (DII®) from the University of South Carolina in order to develop computer and smart phone applications for patient counselling and dietary intervention in clinical settings. Dr. Nitin Shivappa is an employee of CHI.