ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition, Psychology and Brain Health
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1623482
This article is part of the Research TopicThe Role of Nutrition in Mitigating Depression: Mechanisms, Interventions, and OutcomesView all 5 articles
Association between the dietary inflammatory index and depressive symptoms in adults with cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome: evidence of metabolic syndrome as a mediator
Provisionally accepted
- 1Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China
- 2Key Laboratory of Cellular Physiology at Shanxi Medical University, Ministry of Education, Taiyuan, China
- 3Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, the Second Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China
- 4Shanxi Provincial Key Laboratory of Rheumatism Immune Microecology, Taiyuan, China
- 5SXMU-Tsinghua Collaborative Innovation Center for Frontier Medicine, Taiyuan, China
- 6School of Management, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China
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Background: This study aims to investigate the association between the dietary inflammatory index (DII) and depressive symptoms (Deps) in adults with cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM).Methods: Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) spanning from 2005 to 2018, we examined the association between DII and Deps in CKM patients.We employed weighted multivariate logistic regression, generalized additive models, and restricted cubic spline models. Threshold effect analysis was performed to identify the inflection point in the smooth curves. Subgroup and sensitivity analyses were conducted to validate the robustness of the findings. Additionally, we used the Bootstrap method to evaluate the mediating role of metabolic syndrome (Mets).Results: A total of 12,980 participants were included, with 1,096 (8.4%) identified as experiencing Deps. DII was associated with the risk of Deps, which remained robust after adjusting for 20 potential confounders. Specifically, each unit increase in DII was associated with an 18.7% higher incidence of Deps. The relationship between DII and Deps in CKM patients exhibited a J-shaped pattern, with a nonlinear positive correlation observed in the Non-advanced CKM population.Subgroup analyses confirmed the correlation. Additionally, Mets mediated 4.44% of the observed effect.The DII was nonlinearly associated with the risk of Deps in CKM patients. This highlights the importance of targeted interventions to address this comorbidity and mitigate the disease burden associated with both Deps and CKM syndrome.
Keywords: depressive symptoms, cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome, Diet, DiI, adult population
Received: 06 May 2025; Accepted: 18 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tian, Zhang, Zhang, Wu, HUAQING, Wang and Duan. 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: Zhiguang Duan, Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China
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