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Dietary fiber intake and urinary creatinine: methodological implications for epidemiological studies

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Abstract

Creatinine values are used to estimate renal function and to correct for urinary dilution in exposure assessment studies. Interindividual variability in urinary creatinine (UCR) is determined positively by protein intake and negatively by age and diabetes. These factors, among others, need to be accounted for, to increase comparability throughout epidemiological studies. Recently, dietary fiber has been shown to improve renal function. This study aims to evaluate dietary fiber intake relationship with UCR and its methodological implications for studies using UCR-corrected measurements. In a cross-sectional study, we analyzed information regarding UCR, dietary fiber, age, and other UCR-related factors in 801 women residing in Northern Mexico during 2007–2009. The median fiber intake in this population was 33.14 g/day, above the adequate intake level for women > 18 years. We estimated an age-adjusted increase of 10.04 mg/dL UCR for a 10 g/day increase in dietary fiber intake. The main dietary sources of fiber in this population were corn tortillas, raw onions, flour tortillas, and beans. Our results suggest that epidemiological studies adjusting analytes by UCR should also consider controlling dietary fiber intake to improve the comparability of creatinine-corrected values and associations across different populations, such as those in Mexico and Latin America, where protein and fiber intake vary significantly.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available due to them containing information that could compromise research participant privacy or consent but are available from the corresponding author LLC on reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by CONACyT FOSISS (2005-2-14373, 2009-111384, 2010-1-140962, 2016-272632), FOINS PDCPN (2013-01-215464), SEP-CONACyT (2008-79912) the Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy, and the Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program of Boston College.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

HS: formal analysis, writing – original draft, visualization, funding acquisition. AMO: validation, writing – original draft. MEC: conceptualization, writing – review and editing. BGL: writing – review and editing. LLC: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, writing – review and editing, supervision, funding acquisition.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lizbeth López-Carrillo.

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All procedures performed in the study participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the research committee of the National Institute of Public Health (Mexico) and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendment. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Not applicable.

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Responsible Editor: Lotfi Aleya

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Shanmugam, H., Mérida-Ortega, Á., Cebrián, M.E. et al. Dietary fiber intake and urinary creatinine: methodological implications for epidemiological studies. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 29643–29649 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12379-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12379-x

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