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Multivitamins co-intake can reduce the prevalence of kidney stones: a large-scale cross-sectional study

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Abstract

Background

This research aimed to explore the association between changes in the intake of common individual vitamins and combinations of vitamins and the prevalence of kidney calculi.

Methods

We used data from NHANES to investigate the association between nine common vitamins and kidney stone prevalence. Participants were clustered into several vitamin exposure patterns using an unsupervised K-means clustering method. We used logistic regression models and restrictive cubic spline curves to explore the influence of vitamins.

Results

The regression model exposed that compared to lower intake, high intake of vitamin B6 [Q4: OR (95% CI) = 0.76 (0.62, 0.93)], vitamin C [Q4: OR (95% CI) = 0.73 (0.59, 0.90)] and vitamin D [Q4: OR (95% CI) = 0.77 (0.64, 0.94)] individually exerted protective effects against the prevalence of kidney stones. Furthermore, the restrictive cubic spline analysis showed that the protective effect against the prevalence of kidney stones is enhanced as the take of vitamin B6 and vitamin D increased. Moreover, with the increase in vitamin C intake, its protective effect may turn into a risk factor. Regarding mixed exposure, Cluster 4 exhibited a significant protective effect against kidney stones compared with Cluster 1 [Model 3: OR (95% CI) = 0.79 (0.64, 0.98)].

Conclusions

Our research revealed that high levels of vitamin B6 and vitamin D intake were linked to a lower prevalence of kidney stone. With the gradual increase intake of vitamin C, the prevalence of kidney calculi decreased first and then increased. In addition, the co-exposure of nine vitamins is a protective factor for kidney stone disease.

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Data availability

All data used for analysis are publicly available on the NHANES website, and data are available at https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/search/default.aspx.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks for all the staff associated with the NHANES database and all the subjects who participated in this experiment. I would also like to thank all the authors for their joint efforts in determining the final version of this article.

Funding

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urology, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, China

    Hongbo Zeng, Yunhui He, Huixiang Chen, Jun He, Mingke Liu, Shuiqing Wu, Haiqing He, Changkun Huang & Ran Xu

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central-South University, Emergency and Difficult Diseases Institute of Central South University, Changsha, China

    Ziyi Liu

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  1. Hongbo Zeng
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  2. Ziyi Liu
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Contributions

Conceptualization and methodology, RX and HZ; data collection, HZ and ZL; data sorting and analysis, HZ, ZL, YH, HC, SW, HH, CH; software, ZL; validation, HZ, ZL, YH, HC; validation, RX; writing—original draft preparation, all authors; writing—review and editing, all authors; supervision and project administration, RX.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ran Xu.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Ethical approval

Data of this research were taken from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2007–2018. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and study protocol was approved by the NCHS Institutional Review Board (Continuation of Protocol #2005-06, Protocol #2011-17, Continuation of Protocol #2011-17, Protocol #2018-01).

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Zeng, H., Liu, Z., He, Y. et al. Multivitamins co-intake can reduce the prevalence of kidney stones: a large-scale cross-sectional study. Int Urol Nephrol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11255-024-04021-9

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