ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Metabolism
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1617384
This article is part of the Research TopicClinical Research on Nutrition and Children's Health: Focusing on Genetics, Metabolism, and the Gut MicrobiomeView all articles
Population-Based Analysis of the Association Between Composite Dietary Antioxidant Index and Pediatric Obesity
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Pediatrics, Jiaxing Maternity and Children Health Care Hospital, Affiliated Women and Children Hospital, Jiaxing University, Jiaxing, Zhejiang 314051, China., Zhejiang, China
- 2Department of Neonatology, Xinhua Hospital Affiliated to School of Medicine Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200092, China., Shanghai, China
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Objectives: Pediatric obesity is an increasingly serious global problem. Although much attention has been paid to the role of nutrition in pediatric obesity, no prior study has examined the association between the Composite Dietary Antioxidant Index (CDAI), the main measure of an antioxidative diet, and pediatric obesity, and this research aims to investigate this relationship. Methods: Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for the period 2009-2018, we examined the relationship between CDAI and pediatric obesity: Body Mass Index (BMI) and Waist-to-Height Ratio (WHtR) using multivariate linear regression models and smoothing fit curves. Furthermore, subgroup analyses were conducted to observe differences in these associations across various stratifying factors. Results: Our study encompassed 10,019 participants aged 6-18 years with complete data. There was a significant negative correlation between CDAI and BMI (β = -0.04, 95% CI: -0.09, -0.00, P = 0.0367) and WHtR (β = -0.08, 95% CI: -0.15, -0.02, P = 0.0089). Additionally, a one-unit increase in CDAI was linked to a 1.9% decrease in the odds of obesity as defined by WHtR (OR = 0.98, 95% CI: 0.96, 1.00, p = 0.0342). Notably, the negative associations between CDAI and BMI as well as WHtR varied across subgroups. Conclusions: Our findings reveal a linear negative relationship between CDAI and both BMI and WHtR among American children and adolescents, offering novel insights into the potential protective role of antioxidant-rich diets against pediatric obesity.
Keywords: Composite dietary antioxidant index 1, obesity 2, children and adolescents 3, Population-based study 4, NHANES 5
Received: 24 Apr 2025; Accepted: 23 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Wu, Xu, Xie, Yang and Huang. 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: Huafei Huang, hhfjxfby@zjxu.edu.cn
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