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Association of dietary carotenoid intake with the prevalence kidney stones among the general adult population

  • Urology - Original Paper
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Abstract

Purpose

This study was to examine whether higher dietary carotenoid intake levels were associated with a lower prevalence of kidney stones.

Materials and methods

This study analyzed data from 2007 to 2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) project. Dietary carotenoid intake (α-carotene, β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, lycopene, and lutein/zeaxanthin) was assessed using two 24-h dietary recall interviews. Multiple logistic regression and weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression were applied to examine the associations between five dietary carotenoids alone, compounds, and the prevalence of kidney stones. The dose–response relationships were analyzed by restricted cubic spline regression.

Results

A total of 30,444 adults (2909 participants with kidney stones) were included in the analysis. The mean age of the participants was 49.95 years and 49.2% of the participants were male. Compared with the first quartile, the fourth quartile of α-carotene (odds ratio [OR] = 0.82 [0.73–0.92]), β-carotene (OR = 0.79 [0.70–0.89]), β-cryptoxanthin (OR = 0.88 [0.79–0.99]), and lutein/zeaxanthin (OR = 0.80 [0.71–0.91]) were significantly and inversely associated with the prevalence of kidney stones after adjusting for confounders. The dose–response analysis showed a linear relationship between five dietary carotenoid intake levels and the prevalence of kidney stones. Further WQS analysis revealed that the combination of all five dietary carotenoids was negatively associated with and the prevalence of kidney stones, with the largest effect coming from β-carotene (weight = 0.538).

Conclusion

Our findings indicated that higher dietary carotenoid intake levels were associated with decreased prevalence of kidney stones, and increasing the intake of foods rich in β-carotene may prevent the development of kidney stones.

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Data availability

NHANES data described in this manuscript are available at: https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the people who contributed to the NHANES data we studied.

Funding

None.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

The authors’ responsibilities were as follows—ZW: designed the research, and had primary responsibility for the final content; YZ, XG and XZ: conducted analyses and wrote the first draft of the paper; EY, PL, JJ, LZ, and YZ: revised the manuscript; and all the authors: read and approved the final manuscript and approved the final submitted version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhiping Wang.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Ethics statement

All participants provided written informed consent and study procedures were approved by the National Center for Health Statistics Research Ethics Review Board (Continuation of Protocol #2005-06, Protocol #2011-17, Continuation of Protocol #2011-17).

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Zhang, Y., Guo, X., Zhou, X. et al. Association of dietary carotenoid intake with the prevalence kidney stones among the general adult population. Int Urol Nephrol 56, 423–431 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11255-023-03810-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11255-023-03810-y

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