Associations between vitamin K and systemic immune and inflammation biomarkers: a population-based study from the...

With the aging of the population, finding effective interventions and treatments to delay chronic inflammation-related diseases is an urgent problem to be solved. Previous studies on animals have proposed that vitamin K can inhibit inflammation and may be a potential regulator of the immune inflammatory response. These findings suggested that increasing intake of vitamin K might also help reduce inflammation.

This study included 36,895 people from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007-2020). Multivariate linear regression and restricted cubic spline analyses were conducted to explore the association between vitamin K intake and various immune inflammatory factors. Subgroup analyses were performed based on age, gender, ethnicity, BMI, hyperlipidemia, diabetes and hypertension.

After multivariable adjustment, vitamin K intake is negatively correlated with SII, SIRI, SIIRI, NLR, white blood cell, neutrophil, and monocyte. When the level of vitamin K intake was less than 237.7 mcg/d, RAR showed a significant decreasing trend with the increase of vitamin K. When the vitamin K intake level was lower than 75.1 mcg/d, the basophil showed a downward trend with the increase of intake. However, when vitamin K levels exceed the inflection point, the above association no longer exists.

These findings reveal that vitamin K intake is associated with reduced inflammatory status and improvements in immune inflammatory biomarkers. Vitamin K may modulate systemic immune and inflammatory markers, which may play a role in the development of chronic inflammation.