Reduced Insulin Resistance Partly Mediated the Association of High Dietary Magnesium Intake with Less Metabolic Syndrome in a Large Chinese Population

Na Yang, Liyun He, Yuxiu Li, Lingling Xu, Fan Ping, Wei Li, Huabing Zhang Department of Endocrinology, Key Laboratory of Endocrinology of National Health Commission, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Huabing ZhangPeking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, People’s Republic of ChinaTel/ Fax +-86-010-69155073Email huabingzhangchn@163.comPurpose: High dietary magnesium intake may reduce insulin resistance (IR) and metabolic syndrome (MetS). The aim of the cross-sectional analysis was to evaluate the association between dietary magnesium intake, IR, and MetS using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey.Methods: Dietary magnesium intake was defined as daily dietary magnesium intake divided by body weight. Logistic regression analysis was used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) for IR and the prevalence of MetS across the quartile categories of dietary magnesium intake. In addition, we used the macro PROCESS to perform the mediation analyses.Results: A total of 8120 participants were included in the final analysis. We found a significant negative association between dietary magnesium intake and IR, the multivariable-adjusted OR for HOMA-IR comparing the highest to the lowest quartile of dietary magnesium intake was 0.435 (95% confidence intervals [CI] 0.376 to 0.502). The prevalence of the MetS was 38.6%, 28.9%, 22.5%, and 16.5% for increasing quartiles of dietary magnesium intake (p < 0.001). The mediation model analysis displayed that insulin resistance mediated the effect of dietary magnesium on MetS. The direct effect and indirect effect of dietary magnesium on MetS were found significant, and the calculated percentage of mediation by insulin resistance was 19.6%.Conclusion: Our study demonstrated a significant and independent negative relat