413 A NUTRIENT WIDE ASSOCIATION STUDY ON BLOOD PRESSURE

Background: Epidemiological studies often test relationships of single nutrients with disease or examine food patterns e.g. the Mediterranean diet. A nutrient-wide approach is useful to test associations between nutrients (derived from both foods and supplements) and blood pressure (BP), with proper adjustment for multiple comparisons. Methods: Data from 4,680 participants ages 40–59 in the International Study of Macro/Micro-nutrients and Blood Pressure (INTERMAP) were stratified randomly into training and testing sets. NHANES cohorts of 1999–2000 to 2005–2006 were used for external validation. We performed multiple linear regression analyses associating each of 87 nutrients and urine electrolytes with systolic and diastolic BP in the INTERMAP training set. Significant findings were validated in the INTERMAP testing set and further in the NHANES cohorts (False Discovery Rate<5% in training, p < 0.05 for internal and external validation). Results: Among the validated nutrients (False Discovery Rate<5% in training, p < 0.05 for internal and external validation), alcohol was directly associated, while dietary phosphorus, magnesium, folacin, and riboflavin were inversely associated with systolic and diastolic BP. In addition, sodium to potassium ratio were directly and dietary fiber, iron, thiamin, and copper were inversely associated with systolic BP. Inclusion of nutrient intake from supplements in addition to food intake of nutrients did not alter the aforementioned associations for fiber, phosphorus and magnesium intake and attenuated the associations between folacin, thiamin and riboflavin intake with BP. Conclusion: Our analysis highlights previously unstudied or unconfirmed associations between B vitamins, minerals and BP, and offers a systematic unbiased approach to the evaluation and validation of other important nutrient-BP associations.