The relationship between nutritional status and thyroid function among adults in the USA: NHANES 2007–2012
Publication: Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism
30 October 2024
Abstract
Controlled Nutritional Status (CONUT) scores have been developed as quantitative tools that can be employed to gauge the nutritional status of individual patients. However, there has been very little research investigating the association between these CONUT scores and the function of the thyroid. As such, the present study was designed to address this research gap through the evaluation of a representative cohort of American adults. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data were herein used to separate subjects into those with normal nutritional status (CONUT score: 0–1) from those who were malnourished (CONUT scores > 1). Associations between these CONUT scores and the function of the thyroid were investigated through linear regression modeling, employing weighted analytical strategies and subgroup analyses. Overall, 8082 individuals from the NHANES 2007–2012 cohort were enrolled in this analysis. The weighted mean CONUT score for these individuals was 0.72 (0.02), with 6661 participants (weighted proportion: 83.12%) falling within the normal nutritional status group and 1421 participants (weighted proportion: 16.88%) within the malnourished group. In adjusted analyses, subjects who were malnourished were found to present with an increase in FT4 levels (β = 0.033; p < 0.001 together with reduced TT3 levels (β = −3.526; p = 0.01). The present data offer evidence in support of higher CONUT scores, which correspond to malnutrition, being related to increases in FT4 levels together with reductions in TT3 levels. More studies will be crucial to further probe the mechanistic drivers of these results.
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Published In
Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism
Volume 49 • Number 12 • December 2024
Pages: 1692 - 1700
History
Received: 11 April 2024
Accepted: 29 August 2024
Accepted manuscript online: 3 September 2024
Version of record online: 30 October 2024
Copyright
© 2024 The Author(s). Permission for reuse (free in most cases) can be obtained from copyright.com.
Data Availability Statement
Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/.
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Authors
Author Contributions
Conceptualization: JL, MW
Formal analysis: JS, XZ, MW
Funding acquisition: JL, MW
Methodology: JL, XW, MW
Project administration: JL, MW
Supervision: JL, HT
Validation: JL, XL, MW
Visualization: CX, JQ, MW
Writing – original draft: JL, MW
Writing – review & editing: JL, XZ, MW
Competing Interests
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.
Funding Information
Public Interest Jinhua Science and Technology Research Program: 2021-04-008, 2021-04-219
This project was supported by the Public Interest Jinhua Science and Technology Research Program [2021-04-008 and 2021-04-219]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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Junru Liu, Xiaofeng Lu, Xiaohui Wang, Jialu Song, Xiaotao Zhu, Huijing Tong, Chaoyang Xu, Jinfang Qian, Xiaogang Zheng, and Mingzheng Wang. 2024. The relationship between nutritional status and thyroid function among adults in the USA: NHANES 2007–2012. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.
49(12): 1692-1700. https://doi.org/10.1139/apnm-2024-0164
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