Prevalence of Non-Communicable Diseases and Curcumin Use- A Multi Centric Study to Correlate the Impact

Background: Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs) are increasing rapidly all over the world, on the other hand, curcumin has various medicinal properties against NCDs and it is a major ingredient in the Indian household/recipes. Another important factor for the selection of this study was the outbreak of COVID-19 and people had increased awareness about turmeric/ curcumin use during this pandemic situation. So this study aims to find out the prevalence of non-communicable diseases across various centers and correlate them with the usage of curcumin in these centers. Materials and Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed at 4 centers in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. A self-structured questionnaire has been given to collect the details like demographic and disease status with turmeric use and their awareness status. Results: A total of 1276 households were included with 4495 family members. Among the population, the prevalence of non-communicable diseases is cardiovascular diseases (7.7%) followed by diabetes (7.6%), arthritis (3.6%), asthma (0.9%), cancer (0.1%), Alzheimer’s disease (0.2%), psoriasis (0.5%) and others (1.5%). The average years of turmeric use (42.8 years) among the households and the average amount (1.8 grams) of curcumin in their daily recipes were found along with the average daily curcumin use of 0.54 grams. By applying the Mann-Whitney U test, there was a significant association between diabetes and arthritis with curcumin use was verified. Conclusion: This study highlights that the prevalence of diabetes and arthritis was significantly associated with curcumin use. On the other side, people in India were more aware of curcumin as a medicinal herb and consumed higher amounts, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.