Association of Dietary Intake of Vitamin A With Adolescent Hypertension: A Cross-Sectional Study Based on NHANES 1999-2018

We aimed to investigate the association between dietary intake of vitamin A and risk of hypertension during adolescence. We interrogated the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database, from which individual-level data on dietary intake of vitamin A were garnered from 13,909 adolescents (aged 10-19 years) participating in the 1999-2018 study cycle. After dividing vitamin A intake into four quartiles, we leveraged weighted multivariate logistic regression to investigate the association of vitamin A intake with hypertension by each quartile, with the restricted cubic spline (RCS) curve plotted to assess the nonlinearity of association. Additionally, we performed subgroup analysis to examine whether gender remarkably affects vitamin A's effect on hypertension. Of all the adolescent participants, 1477 (10.6%) were found to have hypertension. Following thorough adjustments for confounding factors, per 1-SD increment in vitamin A intake was associated with a 23%, 26%, and 31% reduction in the risk of hypertension for the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quartiles, respectively. Consistently, the RCS curve indicated that the risk of adolescent hypertension presented a decreasing trend as vitamin A intake creeped up. Intriguingly, gender-stratified subgroup analysis demonstrated that the observed association between vitamin A and adolescent hypertension was more pronounced in boys. Together, our findings outlined vitamin A as a protective dietary factor against hypertension among US adolescents. When using vitamin A supplements for preventing hypertension, boys may gain more practical benefits.