Quantitative Association Between Serum/Dietary Magnesium and Cardiovascular Disease/Coronary Heart Disease Risk: A Dose-Response Meta-analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies

Abstract

Background: The quantitative association between serum/dietary magnesium and cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains unclear. We conducted a dose-response meta-analysis to evaluate the quantitative association between serum/dietary magnesium and CVD, including coronary heart disease (CHD).

Methods: PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Web of Science were searched for publications. STATA 12.0 was used to analyze data. We used the random-effects model to reduce heterogeneity.

Results: Eighteen prospective cohort studies with 544,581 participants and 22,658 CVD cases were included. The follow-up duration was 1-28 years. The pooled relative risk (RR) of CVD for the relatively normal versus lowest serum and dietary magnesium level was 0.64 {[95% confidence interval (CI): 0.51-0.80] and 0.90 [95% CI: 0.84-0.96]}. The pooled RR of CHD for the relatively normal versus lowest serum and dietary magnesium level was 0.70 (95% CI: 0.57-0.85) and 0.86 (95% CI: 0.77-0.94). We noted a significant association between increasing serum magnesium levels (per 0.1-mg/dL increase) and risk of CVD (RR: 0.93, 95% CI: 0.88-0.97) and CHD (RR: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.84-0.96) and between dietary magnesium levels (per 100-mg/d increase) and risk of CVD (RR: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.83-0.96) and CHD (RR: 0.92, 95% CI: 0.82-0.98). Serum/dietary Mg level comparisons presented a 7%-10% decrease in CVD/CHD risk. The dose-response meta-analyses showed linear relationships between serum magnesium and CVD (Pnonlinearity = 0.833) or CHD (Pnonlinearity = 0.193) and dietary magnesium and CVD (Pnonlinearity = 0.463) or CHD (Pnonlinearity = 0.440).

Conclusions: Increasing dietary magnesium or serum magnesium level is linearly and inversely associated with the risk of total CVD and CHD events.