Groundbreaking Research Shows Link Between High Soy Intake and Kawasaki Disease

18 Jul 2016 --- Young children are at risk when it comes to heart health, and it may be linked to one food product: soy.

Kawasaki disease (KD) is an autoimmune disorder that doctors say affects about 50,000 people across the US, many of them children. This inflammatory condition attacks the body, affecting a child's eyes, lips, and hands. KD can also inflame the arteries that supply the heart.

“They are called coronary arteries, these arteries will enlarge and form these sacs called aneurysms,” Dr. Michael Portman, who led the study at Seattle Children’s Hospital said.

Other signs include a strawberry tongue, swollen lymph nodes and hands. “It can be deadly, Kawasaki is a real entity its dangerous and it needs to be treated,” Portman said.

It's a mysterious disease with no determined cause yet but Portman, a pediatric cardiologist, is behind new research that eating soy products could influence a child's risk for KD. This could help explain why the disease is unusually common in Asian populations, particularly in Japanese children.

The groundbreaking research found that infants and young children had up to 2.5 times greater chance of developing the disease if they consumed a lot of soy foods like tofu or soy formula. And children of Asian descent, the risk went up 7 to 8 times.

Soybeans and soy products are the richest sources of isoflavones, a plant hormone that resembles human estrogen. For many children, the earliest significant dietary exposure to isoflavones comes through breast milk or soy-based infant formulas.

Portman surveyed 200 children with KD and a control group of 200 without the disease.

The isoflavones compound in soy products could be triggering immune cells: "They resemble estrogen so these estrogen compounds affect immune cells," Portman explained.

Kawasaki disease can happen at any age, but it mostly affects children 6 months to 5 years old.

All parents with young kids should keep KD in mind especially people in the Asian community. Cases are prevalent with people with roots in East Asia like Japan, Korea and China.

“I think there is a prevailing view that soy is healthy, but that's not really the case for small children we have a lot of children especially of Asian descent where their primary food is soy,” Portman said.

“You don’t want to eliminate soy all together but it shouldn’t be your child’s primary diet,” he concluded.