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Usual folic acid intake and folate status in US women aged 12–49 years, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 2001–2006
Author(s) -
Cogswell Mary,
Pfeiffer Christine,
Tinker Sarah,
Berry Robert J
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.24.1_supplement.560.8
Subject(s) - national health and nutrition examination survey , folic acid , medicine , logistic regression , body mass index , physiology , environmental health , population
We examined the association of usual folic acid intake with red blood cell folate concentrations (RBC folates) among 6,205 US women aged 12–49 years participating in NHANES 2001–2006. We estimated total usual folic acid intake (best linear unbiased predictors) from foods and supplements accounting for within individual variation in intake using PC SIDE. We used linear regression to estimate geometric mean RBC folates and logistic regression to estimate the percent with low RBC folates (< 150 ng/ml) accounting for the sampling design and adjusting for age, race‐ethnicity, smoking, body mass index, and usual natural food folate intake. Among women with usual folic acid intake (μg/d) of <100, 100–199, 200–299, 300–399, and ≥400; 3%, 4%, 18%, 62%, and 84%, respectively, consumed a supplement with folic acid. Among these intake groups the mean RBC folates (ng/ml) were 220, 230, 247, 275, and 294, respectively. In addition, the percent of women with low RBC folates decreased with higher folic acid intake, but this decrease varied: among non‐Hispanic white women 13.8%, 6.2%, 4.0%, 1.2%, and 0.9%, respectively, had low RBC folates; among Mexican‐American women 7.0%, 6.3%, 6.9%, 2.5%, and 0.2%, respectively; and among non‐Hispanic black women 34.0%, 23.4,% 19.7%, 11.5%, and 8.2%, respectively. Usual folic acid intake is positively associated with RBC folate, but associations with low RBC folate vary by race‐ethnicity.