Effect of Luteolin Supplementation on Kidney Damage and Long-Term Prognosis in Diabetic Patients: A Cohort Study

Previous studies anticipated that supplementation with Luteolin could potentially serve as a strategy to improve diabetic kidney disease. However, there remains a lack of evidence. The present study aimed to test the effect of Luteolin supplementation on kidney damage and long-term prognosis in diabetic patients. Data for the study participants were obtained from the NHANES database. Information regarding mortality was extracted from the 2019 public-use linked mortality files provided by the NCHS. Flavonoid intake data were extracted from the FNDDS Flavonoid database. A total of 2591 participants were included in this study. Logistic regression analysis was performed to preliminarily analyze the relationship between flavonoid intake dosage and kidney damage prevalence. Kaplan-Meier survival curve was used to illustrate the associations between Luteolin supplementation and survival probability in diabetic patients, with Cox regression analysis employed to investigate whether Luteolin supplementation positively affected survival probability. Covariates including gender, age, ethnicity, education level, marital status, BMI, SBP, HbA1c, smoking status, alcohol intake, and hypertension prevalence were adjusted in multivariate analysis. Preliminary analysis revealed that the intake dosage of Luteolin was an independent influencing factor for the kidney damage prevalence in diabetes. Diabetic patients in the Luteolin-high intake group had a lower prevalence of kidney damage compared to those in the Luteolin-low intake group. The urinary microalbumin to urinary creatinine ratio (UACR) of diabetic patients in the high Luteolin intake group was significantly lower than that of diabetic patients in the low Luteolin intake group. Furthermore, at a median follow-up time of 121 months, there was a decrease in mortality by 14.2% [HR = 0.858, 95% CI: 0.744-0.990, p = 0.036] for every 1 mg/d increase in Luteolin intake. The findings suggested that high Luteolin intake is associated with low kidney damage prevalence and high survival probability among diabetic patients.