Vascular calcification (VC) is a pathology characterized by ectopic calcification in the vessel wall of muscular or elastic arteries (1), which can be commonly observed in patients with diabetes, chronic kidney disease (CKD), hypertension, osteoporosis, etc. (2–4). It contributes to a series of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) including atherosclerosis, hypertension, aortic stenosis, and coronary heart disease and associated with a poor prognosis including higher risk of mortality, adverse cardiovascular events (stroke, acute myocardial infarction, peripheral vascular diseases, etc.), and other comorbidities (5). Meanwhile, severe calcification poses a great challenge to the treatment. There is currently no validated effective treatment for VC, and the underlying mechanisms have not been fully elucidated. Sodium thiosulfate has been reported as a potential treatment method, but more studies are still necessary (6). Djuric et al. found that sodium thiosulfate positively affected calcification progress in iliac arteries and heart valves but failed to hinder the calcification progress of abdominal aorta in a small randomized controlled trial (7). Further studies are still needed to validate the potential clinical application. After the onset of CVDs accompanied with VC, it is difficult to reverse the diseased vessels. Additionally, VC itself can hinder its treatment. For example, coronary artery disease complicated with severe calcification was still a problem in percutaneous coronary intervention treatment (8). Both clinical and epidemiological data showed that VC was closely related to higher cardiovascular disease risk and mortality, thus, the prevention and management of VC is of great significance (9, 10).

The abdominal aorta is a site prone to atherosclerosis and calcification, which could act as a good indicator of VC in patients and predicted both cardiovascular and all-cause mortality (11–13). It has been reported that the prevalence of abdominal aortic calcification (AAC) increased with age, ranging from 60% at age 65–69 years to 96% at 85 years and older. In addition, patients with AAC showed an increased risk of cardiovascular death and all-cause mortality than those without AAC (14). To evaluate the severity of calcified vessels, Kauppila et al. described an AAC grading quantification method (AAC score) by using lateral lumbar radiography in a Framingham study subgroup and found it could predict all-cause mortality and non-fatal cardiovascular events in hemodialysis patients independently (15, 16). Recently, the development of imaging technology helps us to understand VC more comprehensively. In 2009, the Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) suggested that abdominal lateral X-ray film should be used instead of CT as the basic imaging examination to evaluate whether abdominal aorta calcification exists and suggested that AAC score could reflect aortic calcification in peritoneal dialysis patients (17).

As a potential target for therapeutic measures, the management of diet is the most basic treatment in clinical practice and the dietary influence on health has aroused wide attention. Shivappa et al. developed the dietary inflammatory index (DII), a literature-derived, population-based dietary score summarizing the effect of dietary parameters on inflammation, which categorizes an individual's diet into proinflammatory and anti-inflammatory diet (18). A positive higher DII score means a more proinflammatory effect and a negative lower DII score indicates a more anti-inflammatory effect. Previous studies have documented a direct association between DII and a higher risk for cancer, metabolic syndrome, sarcopenia, etc. (19, 20). Li et al. reported that dietary patterns with a higher proinflammatory potential were associated with higher risk of coronary heart disease and strokes, and reducing the dietary inflammatory potential may potentially provide an effective strategy for CVD prevention (21).

Although the mechanisms involved in VC are complex and related to multiple factors, current studies have mainly found that inflammation can promote VC (22). However, the relationship between dietary inflammatory potential and abdominal aortic calcification has not been reported before. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), the aim of this study was to explore the association of dietary inflammatory potential and AAC, which may shed new light on the management of VC in clinical practice.

In this cross-sectional study including 2,897 adults, a significant positive association between DII with AAC score and severe ACC was observed, indicating that a proinflammatory diet may contribute to higher AAC score and increased risk of severe AAC. The associations between the exposure variable and outcomes were still stable in subgroups stratified by gender, age, BMI, hypertension status, and diabetes status, suggesting that this positive association may be appropriate for different population settings.

To our knowledge, this is the first study assessing the association between the dietary inflammatory potential and AAC. Previous studies have revealed the influence of various dietary factors on calcification. Experimental studies have shown the roles of high phosphorus and calcium diets as promoters of calcification, and magnesium and vitamin K intakes as inhibitory factors (30–34). Obesity and metabolic syndrome could also promote VC, and vitamin E can protect against calcification in uremic rats (35–37). In addition, Lu et al. reported that high serum selenium concentration was positively associated with a mean AAC score and an increased risk of severe AAC among non-institutionalized US adults independently (38).

As one of the most appropriate approaches to understand the relationship between diet and the risk of various diseases, dietary pattern analysis has been regarded as a more robust and valid measure of dietary intake in the longer term (39). It has been demonstrated that a proinflammatory diet can increase systemic inflammation (40). For example, the “Western” diet containing high intake in red meat, high-fat dairy products, refined grains, and simple carbohydrates, has been reported to be associated with higher levels of CRP and interleukin (IL)-6 (41, 42). In contrast, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet emphasized intake of fruits, vegetables, low fat dairy foods, and reduced saturated and total fat, which can suppress the inflammation process (43). Likewise, the Mediterranean diet pattern, which is high in fruit, vegetables, and healthy fats, has been reported to be associated with reduced concentrations of CRP (44). Recently, DII has been gradually explored by more scholars as a variable risk factor on health and disease in a number of specialized areas, including cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome (19, 45), cancer (46–48), obstetrics (49), digestive system disease (50, 51), etc. Relevant to our study, inflammation was regarded to play a crucial role in VC.

Traditionally, VC was classified into two forms, depending on the place where the mineral deposit is located. Intimal calcification was closely related to lipid deposits, and the clinically relevant infiltration of inflammatory cells, with obstructive arterial disease (34), and medial calcification was associated with aging, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, osteoporosis, and CKD (22). It is recognized as a cell-mediated, active process involving a series of related genes and proteins, with an imbalance of promoters and inhibitors. With the advances in the field of VC pathogenesis, our current understanding of the mechanism of VC included chronic inflammation, autophagy defects, endoplasmic reticulum stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and its dynamics (52). The exact mechanism of the positive association between DII and AAC in our study still remains unclear. A possible explanation to support our results might be the effect of diet on proinflammatory markers such as IL-1, IL-6, and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) (18, 53). Proinflammatory diet could increase the level of inflammation markers, and the increased inflammation level promotes VC (22). Previous studies have indicated that IL-1β (54), IL-6 (55), and TNF-α (56) could stimulate vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) calcification through various pathways. The increased IL-1β release could modulate proinflammatory signaling cascades in VSMCs to promote calcification through NF-kappa B pathway, WNT/β-catenin pathway, etc. (57, 58). IL-6 could also get involved in the VSMC calcification by inducing oxidative stress and activating RANKL, STAT3, BMP-2-WNT/β-catenin pathway, etc. (59–62). TNF-α mediated calcification via the upregulation of BMP-2 signaling and triggered the osteo-/chondrogenic transformation of VSMCs with an interplay with MSX-2 up-expression, WNT/β-catenin pathway, and oxidative stress (63–65). Proinflammatory macrophages also have been reported to further play a key role in VC progression (66). It could be inferred that proinflammatory diet may increase the inflammation level, and the continuously activated inflammatory state could lead to the activation of inflammation-related signaling pathways, macrophage infiltration, and T-lymphocyte activation, which in turn activated the differentiation of VSMCs into osteoblastic phenotype and calcium salt deposition, resulting in the progress of vascular calcification.

One of the strengths of our study is that it was based on a nationwide, population-based sampling survey data and appropriate weighting of survey participants was adopted, making the findings widely usable in the US population. In addition, considering the relationship of ACC with some other risk factors, several covariables related to AAC including gender, age, BMI, serum creatinine, hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, smoke, etc. were included in the adjusted model for weighted multiple regression analysis (67–69). Moreover, our large sample size allowed us to perform subgroup analyses. Our results indicated that the positive association between DII and AAC was similar in population with differences in gender, age, BMI, hypertension status, and diabetes status. Given the fact that aging was originally one of the strongest drivers of VC in the elderly, the prevalence of AAC was expected to be increased among older population (70). For the subgroup analysis stratified by age, we found that DII was positively associated with higher AAC score (β = 0.021, p for trend = 0.01570) and higher risk of severe AAC (OR = 1.043, p for trend = 0.00852) in the <60 year-old subgroup. In the ≥60-year-old group, we observed a similar result (for AAC score, β = 0.118, p for trend = 0.02026; for severe AAC, OR = 1.085, p for trend = 0.01500). Interaction test indicated that the magnitude of the association was the same for population with different ages (for AAC score, p for interaction = 0.2534; for severe AAC, p for interaction = 0.5528). Indeed, for each unit of increased DII, a 4.3% and 8.5% increased risk of severe AAC was observed for participants aged <60 and ≥60 years, which was consistent with the fact that older population showed a higher AAC prevalence and had higher risks of AAC.

The limitations of this study cannot be ignored. Firstly, since NHANES was a cross-sectional survey in US population, we could not obtain a causal relationship between dietary inflammatory potential with AAC, and the ability of our findings to be generalized to a common population or other ethnic groups may be limited. Therefore, prospective studies with a larger sample size are required to clarify the causality. Secondly, we cannot completely rule out residual confounders due to unmeasured or unknown variables. For example, even in the non-hospitalized population, there is a possibility that medication may affect VC, such as vitamin K antagonists (71) and statins (58, 72). In addition, the data on AAC scores for participants aged <40 years old was not available in NHANES 2013–2014. Thus, we could not analyze this association for wider age groups. The detailed molecular mechanisms supporting our findings are still uncertain and need more laboratory-based real experiments. Finally, the DII was calculated from a detailed and validated dietary questionnaire, but the diet was subject to change over time, thus we cannot account for dietary changes. Since the DII was calculated based on the 24-h dietary recall data, some misclassification of the exposure and recall bias were inevitable. Thus, further researches are still needed to gain insight into the long-term association between dietary inflammatory potential and AAC.

In this cross-sectional study with 2,897 adults included, a significant positive association between DII and AAC was observed, indicating that higher consumption of proinflammatory diet might contribute to a higher AAC score and increased risk of severe AAC. Our finding suggests that a proper anti-inflammatory dietary management maybe beneficial to lower the risk of vascular calcification in adults. However, further research and clinical settings are still needed to validate for potential application.

Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by The NCHS Ethic Review Board. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

ZQ: data analysis, software, and writing (original draft). KC: formal analysis and writing (original draft). RL: methodology and writing (original draft). LJ and QY: formal analysis and software. BS: conceptualization, funding acquisition, and writing (reviewing and editing). All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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