Associations of dietary antioxidant micronutrients with the prevalence of obesity in adults

Yazhu Yang; Haifeng Xu; Yi Zhang; Lin Chen; Chengzi Tian; Bihui Huang; Youpeng Chen; Lin Ma

doi:10.3389/fnut.2023.1098761

Associations of dietary antioxidant micronutrients with the prevalence of obesity in adults

Front Nutr. 2023 Mar 13:10:1098761. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2023.1098761. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Yazhu Yang¹, Haifeng Xu^{2

3}, Yi Zhang³, Lin Chen¹, Chengzi Tian¹, Bihui Huang³, Youpeng Chen², Lin Ma¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Reproductive Medicine Center, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China.
² Department of Infectious Diseases, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China.
³ Scientific Research Center, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, China.

Abstract

Background: Antioxidant micronutrients have a therapeutic potential for clinical treatment of obesity. NO research, however, has examined the connection between the complex level of dietary antioxidants and obesity.

Materials and methods: We mainly aimed to investigate the relationship between a combination of antioxidants and obesity using the database of the national health and nutrition examination survey (NHANES). This cross-sectional study contains a survey of 41,021 people (≥18 years) in total ranging from 2005 to 2018. Multivariate logistic and weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression were performed to investigate the associations between these antioxidants, both individually and collectively, and the prevalence of obesity. The restricted cubic spline (RCS) regression was also utilized to analyze the linearity of these associations.

Results: According to multivariate logistic models, we found that the levels of most antioxidants in the highest quartile were independently related to a lower prevalence of obesity, while a reverse result was observed in selenium (p for trend <0.05). The WQS index revealed that a total of the 11 antioxidants is negatively related to the prevalence of obesity and abdominal obesity (all p<0.001), and iron/vitamin C have the greatest weight in the negative associations between antioxidant complex and obesity, as well as abdominal obesity. In addition, the RCS regression showed that retinol, vitamin A, α-carotene, β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, vitamin C, iron, and copper all had a non-linear association with obesity. Threshold effect analysis demonstrated that the inflection points of retinol, vitamin A, α-carotene, β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, vitamin C, iron, and cooper were 235.57, 374.81, 58.89, 891.44, 30.70, 43,410.00, 11,240.00, and 990.00 μg/day, respectively.

Conclusion: Our study found that a high level of a complex of 11 dietary antioxidants is related to a lower prevalence of obesity and abdominal obesity, among this inverse associations iron and vitamin C have the greatest weight.

Keywords: NHANES; RCS regression; WQS regression; antioxidant micronutrients; obesity.