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Associations between urinary cadmium levels, blood pressure, and hypertension: the ESTEBAN survey

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Abstract

Cadmium is inconsistently associated with blood pressure (BP) and hypertension. Our study focuses to understand the association between urinary cadmium levels, blood pressure, and hypertension in a French representative sample. Our study included 2015 subjects from the ESTEBAN survey (2014–2015) with measured urinary cadmium. Associations between natural logarithm-transformed cadmium levels and BP (systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP)) were performed by adjusted linear regression models. Associations between cadmium and hypertension were performed by adjusted logistic regression models. Models were stratified by gender, smoking habits, body mass index (BMI), and kidney function categories. Men present higher SBP (131.7 vs. 121.5 mmHg, p < 0.0001) and DBP (78.9 vs. 74.7 mmHg, p < 0.0001) in comparison to women. Creatinine-adjusted urinary cadmium levels (0.48 vs. 0.39 μg/L, p < 0.0001) were higher in hypertensive subjects. Nevertheless, no difference was observed after adjustment for age, gender, and smoking habits. No correlation between urinary cadmium, BP, and hypertension was observed in overall population. Stratified models showed inverse correlations between urinary cadmium and hypertension among obese (OR = 0.39, 95% CI [0.21–0.57], p = 0.0009), chronic kidney function (OR = 0.68 95%CI [0.75–0.97], p = 0.003), and current smokers (OR = 0.78, 95% CI [0.64–0.92], p = 0.04). A correlation between urinary cadmium levels, BP, and hypertension is observed in subpopulations. Nevertheless, directions and significance of these associations differs by gender, BMI, smoking, and kidney function categories.

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Abbreviations

SBP:

Systolic blood pressure

DBP:

Diastolic blood pressure

Adjusted-UCd:

creatinine-adjusted UCd measure

UCd:

Urinary cadmium level

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Diagnosis and Therapeutic Center, Hypertension and Cardiovascular Prevention Unit, Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, Paris Descartes University, 1 place du Parvis de Notre-Dame AP-HP, Paris, France

    Alexandre Vallée & Jacques Blacher

  2. Santé Publique France, The French Public Health Agency, Saint-Maurice, France

    Amélie Gabet, Clémence Grave & Valérie Olié

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  1. Alexandre Vallée
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  2. Amélie Gabet
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Correspondence to Alexandre Vallée.

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Vallée, A., Gabet, A., Grave, C. et al. Associations between urinary cadmium levels, blood pressure, and hypertension: the ESTEBAN survey. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 10748–10756 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-07249-6

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