Higher dietary fiber intake is associated with lower cardiovascular disease mortality risk among maintenance hemodialysis patients: a multicenter prospective cohort study
Abstract High fiber intake is associated with reduced mortality risk in both general and chronic kidney disease populations. However, in dialysis patients such data is limited. Therefore, the association between dietary fiber intake (DFI) and the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality was examined in this study. A total of 1044 maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients from eight outpatient dialysis centers in China were included in this study. Data on DFI was collected using 24-h dietary recalls for three days in a week and was normalized to actual dry weight. The study outcomes included all-cause and CVD mortality. Over a median of 46 months of follow-up, 354 deaths were recorded, of which 210 (59%) were due to CVD. On assessing DFI as tertiles, the CVD mortality risk was significantly lower in patients in tertile 2-3 (≥0.13g/kg/d; hazard ratio [HR]: 0.71; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.51-0.97) compared to those in tertile 1 (<0.13g/kg/d). A similar, but non-significant trend was found for the association between DFI (tertile 2-3 vs. tertile 1; HR: 0.83; 95%CI: 0.64-1.07) and all-cause mortality. In summary, higher DFI was associated with lower CVD mortality risk among Chinese patients of MHD. This study emphasized the significance of dietary fiber intake in MHD patients, and provided information that is critical for the improvement of dietary guidelines for dialysis patients.