Abstract
Magnesium is essential for maintaining normal cellular and organ function. In-adequate magnesium balance is associated with various disorders, such as skeletal deformities, cardiovascular diseases, and metabolic syndrome. Unfortunately, routinely measured serum magnesium levels do not always reflect total body magnesium status. Thus, normal blood magnesium levels eclipse the wide-spread magnesium deficiency. Other magnesium measuring methods, including the magnesium loading test, may provide more accurate reflections of total body magnesium status and thus improve identification of magnesium-deficient individuals, and prevent magnesium deficiency related complications.
Highlights
Nutrients act in a coordinated manner to maintain physiologic cellular and tissue functions, and their dysregulation could adversely affect organ functions [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
Total and/or ionized magnesium concentrations measured in plasma or serum are not reliable markers of total magnesium levels in the body; as serum magnesium does not reflect the total magnesium content at the tissue or organs, and is a poor indicator of intracellular magnesium content (Box 1) [16,17]
Individuals with serum magnesium levels between the 0.75 to 0.85 mmol/L should be tested with additional measurements to confirm body magnesium status
Summary
Nutrients act in a coordinated manner to maintain physiologic cellular and tissue functions, and their dysregulation could adversely affect organ functions [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Individuals with serum magnesium levels between the 0.75 to 0.85 mmol/L should be tested with additional measurements to confirm body magnesium status. In humans, red blood cell (RBC) magnesium levels often provide a better reflection of body magnesium status than blood magnesium levels. In case of magnesium deficiency, a blood test of magnesium might show normal levels, while an RBC magnesium test would provide a more accurate reflection of magnesium status of the body. Load retention >27%, following an intravenous magnesium load is considered highly indicative of magnesium deficiency [22,24] It needs to be mentioned, that intravenous or oral magnesium loading tests require normal kidney or gastrointestinal functions to get an accurate reflection of magnesium status.
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