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Vitamin B6 intake and the risk of incident kidney stones

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Abstract

Higher vitamin B6 intake might reduce urinary excretion of oxalate, one of the major determinants of risk for calcium oxalate kidney stones. Previous studies investigating the association between intake of vitamin B6 and risk of stones found conflicting results. We sought to investigate the association in three large prospective cohorts. We prospectively examined the association in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS; n = 42,919 men), Nurses’ Health Study I (NHS I; n = 60,003 older women), and Nurses’ Health Study II (NHS II; n = 90,629 younger women). Hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for incident stones across categories of total vitamin B6 intake (<3.0, 3.0–4.9, 5.0–9.9, 10.0–39.9, ≥40.0 mg/day) were generated with Cox proportional hazards regression models adjusted for potential confounders. During 3,316,846 person-years of follow-up, 6576 incident kidney stones were confirmed. In univariate and multivariate analyses, there was no association between intake of vitamin B6 and incident stones. The HR for stones in the highest category compared with the lowest was 1.05 (95% CI 0.85, 1.30; p value for trend = 0.61) for HPFS, 0.95 (95% CI 0.76, 1.18; p value for trend = 0.42) for NHS I, and 1.06 (95% CI 0.91, 1.24; p value for trend = 0.34) for NHS II. The pooled adjusted HR for the highest category compared with the lowest was 1.03 (95% CI 0.92, 1.15; p value for trend = 0.60). Intake of vitamin B6 is not associated with risk of incident kidney stones.

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Abbreviations

BMI:

Body mass index

CI:

Confidence interval

FFQ:

Food frequency questionnaire

HPFS:

Health Professionals Follow-up Study

HR:

Hazard ratio

NHS:

Nurses’ Health Study

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Nephrology, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, 00168, Rome, Italy

    Pietro Manuel Ferraro & Giovanni Gambaro

  2. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

    Eric N. Taylor & Gary C. Curhan

  3. Division of Nephrology and Transplantation, Maine Medical Center, Portland, USA

    Eric N. Taylor

  4. Renal Division, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA

    Gary C. Curhan

Authors
  1. Pietro Manuel Ferraro
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  2. Eric N. Taylor
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  3. Giovanni Gambaro
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  4. Gary C. Curhan
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Contributions

PMF, ENT, GG and GCC designed research; PMF, ENT and GCC conducted research; PMF analyzed data; PMF, ENT, GG and GCC wrote the paper; PMF and GCC had primary responsibility for final content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pietro Manuel Ferraro.

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Funding

Supported by research Grants from the National Institutes of Health: DK094910, DK91417, CA186107, CA176726 and CA167552.

Conflict of interest

GCC: Consultant: Allena Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, Exponent; Royalties: UpToDate (author and Section Editor); Honorarium: American Society of Nephrology (Editor-in-Chief, Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology). PMF received consultant fees from BioHealth Italia. All other authors have nothing to disclose.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

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

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Ferraro, P.M., Taylor, E.N., Gambaro, G. et al. Vitamin B6 intake and the risk of incident kidney stones. Urolithiasis 46, 265–270 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00240-017-0999-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00240-017-0999-5

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