Is dietary intake of advanced glycation end products associated with mortality among adults with diabetes?

Prior studies suggest a positive association between dietary AGEs and adverse health outcomes but have not well-characterized AGEs intake and its association with mortality in a general adult population in the United States.

We included 5474 adults with diabetes from the 2003 to 2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a nationally representative sample of the non-institutionalized civilian population in the United States. Concordance to dietary guidelines (Healthy Eating Index 2015 [HEI-2015]) and intake of the AGE Nϵ-(carboxymethyl)lysine (CML) were estimated using an existing database and two 24-h food recalls. Multivariable Cox regression evaluated the association between AGEs intake and all-cause mortality. A secondary analysis measured CML, Nϵ-(1-carboxyethyl)lysine (CEL), and Nδ-(5-hydro-5-methyl-4-imidazolon-2-yl)-ornithine (MGH1) from an alternative database. Higher AGEs intake was associated with lower concordance to dietary guidelines (Means and standard errors of HEI-2015 score, by quartiles of AGEs intake: Q1 = 55.2 ± 0.6, Q2 = 54.1 ± 0.5, Q3 = 52.1 ± 0.5, Q4 = 49.0 ± 0.5; p < 0.001). There were 743 deaths among 3884 adults in the mortality analysis (mean follow-up = 3.8 years). AGEs intake was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality (Q2 vs. Q1: Hazard Ratio [HR] = 0.91 [0.69-1.21], Q3 vs. Q1: HR = 0.90 [0.63-1.27], Q4 vs. Q1: HR = 1.16 [0.84-1.60]). Results were similar in secondary analyses.

While dietary AGEs intake was associated with concordance to dietary guidelines, it was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality among adults with diabetes. Further research may consider other health outcomes as well as the evaluating specific contribution of dietary AGEs to overall AGEs burden.