Abstract
The growing interest in potential health effects of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) makes it important to evaluate the method used to assess the fatty acid intake in nutrition research studies. We aimed to validate the questionnaire-based dietary intake of selected PUFAs: eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), α-linolenic acid (ALA), linoleic acid (LA), and arachidonic acid (AA) within the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC), by comparing 345 women’s reported intake with concentration of plasma biomarkers. The applied questionnaire- and biomarker data reflect dietary intake from around the same time point in mid-pregnancy and relationships were investigated by use of Pearson and Spearman correlation and linear regression statistics. We demonstrated moderate but consistent adjusted correlations between dietary intake estimates and the corresponding plasma biomarker concentrations (differences in plasma concentration per 100 mg/day greater intake of 0.05 (95% CI: 0.02; 0.08)) and 0.05 (95% CI: 0.01; 0.08) percentage of total plasma fatty acids for EPA and DHA, respectively). The associations strengthened when restricting the analyses to women with ALA intake below the median intake. We found a weak correlation between the dietary intake of ALA and its plasma biomarker with a difference in plasma concentration of 0.07 (95% CI: 0.03; 0.10) percent of total plasma fatty acids per 1 g/day greater intake, while the dietary intake of LA and AA did not correlate with their corresponding biomarkers.
Highlights
Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are commonly perceived as health-promoting dietary components [1]
PUFAforintake inrange the Danish biggerthe subsample of the DNBC (345 vs. 88 women in the earlier study), a wider of fatty National diet–disease studies, the aim of the present study was to acids, and within a future more optimal design forassociation studying the relationship between self-reported dietary intake and biomarkers
We found a weak correlation between the dietary intake of association studies include α-linolenic acid (ALA) and its plasma biomarker, while dietary intake of linoleic acid (LA) and arachidonic acid (AA) failed to correlate with the corresponding plasma biomarkers
Summary
Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are commonly perceived as health-promoting dietary components [1]. The seafood-specific PUFAs, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), belonging to the essential long-chained n-3 (LCn3FAs) family, have been investigated thoroughly in the attempt to understand their putative beneficial roles in pregnancy-related complications, developmental outcomes, as well as non-communicable diseases in adulthood [2,3,4,5,6]. This particular interest in dietary PUFAs makes it important to evaluate the various methods used in nutrition research to estimate fatty acid intake, since a poor estimate might lead to Nutrients 2019, 11, 568; doi:10.3390/nu11030568 www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients. Estimates based on self-reporting are often afflicted by lack of precision in the reporting and are curtailed by the methods used for nutrient calculations, which often have to rely on quite rough assumptions related to
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