ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Microbes
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1593461
This article is part of the Research TopicXenobiotics, Gut Microbiota, and Chronic DiseaseView all 10 articles
The association between the serum fat-soluble vitamins (A, D and E) and the intake of live microbes: a national population based cross-sectional study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Health Management Centre, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
- 2Department of Nephrology, Key Laboratory of Nephrology, Ministry of Health of China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nephrology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
- 3The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
- 4Department of Gastroenterology,, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
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Objective: Fat-soluble vitamins (FSVs) play essential roles in numerous physiological processes and are involved in the onset and progression of chronic diseases. However, limited research has investigated whether dietary intake of live microbes correlates with circulating FSVs levels. This study aims to explore the relationship between the dietary intake of live microbes and the serum levels of FSVs.We conducted a cross-sectional analysis on a nationally representative sample of 27,668 participants from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to assess the association between serum levels of FSVs and the intake of dietary live microbes. Weighted generalized linear regression and logistic regression models were used to evaluate the associations, adjusting for demographic, lifestyle, laboratory, and dietary covariates.Results: After multivariate adjustment, each one-unit increase in the natural logtransformed MedHi food intake corresponds to an increase of 0.17 µg/dL in vitamin A (95% CI: 0.04, 0.30), 0.36 nmol/L in vitamin D (95% CI: 0.22, 0.51), and 4.65 µg/dL in vitamin E (95% CI: 1.91, 7.39). Furthermore, the exposure-response curves for MedHi consumption showed a consistent decreasing trend in the prevalence of low serum levels of these FSVs.3 Conclusions: In conclusion, this study provides evidence that the dietary intake of live microbes is associated with increased serum levels of FSVs and may contribute to reducing deficiencies in these vitamins.
Keywords: Fat-soluble vitamins, live microbes, NHANES, Cross-sectional analysis, The exposure-response curves NHANES: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, FSVs: fat-soluble vitamins, NCHS: National Center for Health Statistics, USDA: US Department of Agriculture
Received: 14 Mar 2025; Accepted: 09 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zheng, Liu, Xu, Li and Hong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hua Hong, Department of Health Management Centre, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
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