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The Association Between Daily Intake of Dietary Supplements and Self-Reported Endometriosis: A NHANES-Based Study

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Abstract

Dietary supplements are gaining recognition as potential influencers of female reproductive health, but their connection to endometriosis risk remains underexplored. This study addressed this gap, examining the impact of daily dietary supplement intake on the initiation and progression of endometriosis. To explore this, a cross-sectional study was conducted involving 3950 participants representative of the US population from the 1999–2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Infertility was determined by a question on year-long attempts to become pregnant. Unweighted and weighted multivariate logistic regression analyses assessed the association between dietary supplements and endometriosis risk. Subgroup analysis was conducted based on the participants’ body mass index (BMI). The results revealed intriguing patterns. Specifically, higher dietary fiber content (Q4 vs Q1: OR = 0.56, 95% CI = (0.37,0.84), P = 0.0062) and density (Q4 vs Q1: OR = 0.55, 95% CI = (0.38,0.81), P = 0.0035) were linked to reduced risk of endometriosis. Protein content (Q4 vs Q1: OR = 0.47, 95% CI = (0.31,0.74), P = 0.0011) and density (Q4 vs Q1: OR = 0.63, 95% CI = (0.45,0.88), P = 0.0096) similarly exhibited a negative association with endometriosis risk. Interestingly, when stratified by BMI, these effects were pronounced in normal-weight women, whereas they were not evident in the overweight and obese subgroup. Protein content and density showed no significant associations across subpopulations. In conclusion, this study established a negative relationship between dietary fiber and endometriosis, particularly notable in normal-weight women. Future research is essential to validate these findings and establish a causal link between dietary fiber and endometriosis.

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Data Availability

The datasets used in the current study are publicly available, which can be accessed at https://wwwn.cdc.gov/Nchs/Nhanes/.

Code Availability

Not applicable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Reproductive Medicine and Offspring Health, Clinical Center of Reproductive Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, China

    Kaiquan Li & Wenchao Zhang

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  1. Kaiquan Li
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  2. Wenchao Zhang
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Contributions

Conceptualization, WZ; formal analysis, KL, WZ; methodology, WZ; software, WZ; writing—original draft, review and editing, KL, WZ.

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Correspondence to Wenchao Zhang.

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All survey procedures are supervised and approved by the NCHS Ethics Review Board, and each survey respondent provides written consent. These publicly available data are de-identified, so further institutional review committee approval is exempted.

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Li, K., Zhang, W. The Association Between Daily Intake of Dietary Supplements and Self-Reported Endometriosis: A NHANES-Based Study. Reprod. Sci. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43032-024-01464-4

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