Impact of phthalate metabolites on vitamin D levels and subclinical inflammation: national health and nutrition examination survey, 2013–2018

ABSTRACT

This study explores the association between phthalates and total vitamin D levels and the link between phthalates exposure and subclinical inflammation using monocyte percentage to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol ratio (MHR), utilizing three National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) survey cycles 2013-2018. This study is cross-sectional, utilizing one-time urine samples from randomly selected NHANES participants to assess phthalate metabolites. An inverse association between vitamin D and all Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) metabolites was found. The molar sum of DEHP metabolites was inversely associated with vitamin D (β −2.329; 95% CI −3.937,−0.720). An inverse association was observed between monocarboxynonyl phthalate and vitamin D (β −0.0278; 95% CI −0.0527,−0.00298). A similar relationship was found between monocarboxyoctyl phthalate and vitamin D (β −0.0160; 95% CI −0.0242,−0.00775). There was no association between phthalate metabolites and MHR. Stratified analysis showed that the association between phthalate metabolites and MHR may vary according to vitamin D status.

KEYWORDS:

• MHR
• phthalates
• plasticizers
• vitamin D
• 25(OH)D

Acknowledgements

Authors acknowledge the Center for Disease, Atlanta USA for making the NHANES data available. Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Authors’ contributions

Elhassan Mahmoud: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Abdalla Moustafa Elsayed: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Muhammad Zain Kaleem: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Hamad A. Alkorbi: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Amgad M. Elshoeibi: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Tawanda Chivese – Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – review & editing

Susu M. Zughaier: Conceptualization, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – review & editing

Data availability statement

NHANES dataset was analyzed in this study, which is publicly available. It can be found here: https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/

Ethics statement

The NHANES survey data are publicly available and all records are de-identified.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.