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The Relationship between Dietary Copper intake and Telomere Length in Hypertension

  • Original Research
  • Published:
The journal of nutrition, health & aging

Abstract

Background

More indications proved that diet might be involved in the telomere length, a marker of biological aging and chronic diseases. Copper is widely viewed as one of the essential elements in the diet. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between telomere length and dietary copper intake in hypertension and provide a basis for guiding dietary copper intake in patients with hypertension.

Methods

The data was collected from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in 1999–2000 and 2001–2002. The relevance between telomere length and dietary copper intake in hypertension is assessed using a multivariable linear regression model.

Results

We gathered 1,867 participants with hypertension with assessed telomere length and dietary copper intake. We found that one unit increasing log-transformed dietary copper intake in hypertension was significantly associated with longer telomere length base pair (bp) (β = 112.20, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 5.48, 218.92), after controlling for covariates, including age, sex, ethnicity, body mass index (BMI), physical activity, and taking medication for hypertension. For the age group, we found that one unit increasing log-transformed dietary copper in hypertension was associated with longer telomere length (β = 237.95, 95% CI: 114.39, 361.51) in the age group >45 years. The grouping was based on whether the participants take medication for hypertension. We found that one unit increasing log-transformed dietary copper in hypertension was associated with longer telomere length (β = 116.47, 95% CI: 0.72, 232.21) in the group that takes medication for hypertension.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates that dietary copper intake was associated with longer telomere length in patients with hypertension, which provides evidence for guiding dietary copper intake in patients with hypertension. However, further studies are needed to evaluate the effect of copper supplementation on telomere length in patients with hypertension in well-designed random control studies and prospective studies.

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Funding

This research received no external funding.

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Author notes

  1. Huping Gong, Qian Yu and Ming Yuan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Nursing, Gannan Medical University, Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China

    H. Gong & Q. Yu

  2. Department of Medicine, Jinggangshan University, Ji’an, Jiangxi, China

    M. Yuan, Y. Jiang & J. Wang

  3. College of Nursing, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China

    Pan Huang

  4. Department of Cardiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China

    H. Gong & Jianghua Zhou

Authors
  1. H. Gong
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  2. Q. Yu
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  3. M. Yuan
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  4. Y. Jiang
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  5. J. Wang
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  6. Pan Huang
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  7. Jianghua Zhou
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Pan Huang or Jianghua Zhou.

Ethics declarations

The study protocols for NHANES approved by NCHS Research Ethics Review Board (Protocol#98-12). All participants provided written informed consent before participating in the study.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Gong, H., Yu, Q., Yuan, M. et al. The Relationship between Dietary Copper intake and Telomere Length in Hypertension. J Nutr Health Aging 26, 510–514 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-022-1787-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-022-1787-7

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