Higher urine volume results in additional renal iodine loss.

BACKGROUND

For some endocrine and nutritional biomarkers, for example, cortisol and vitamin B(12), significant associations between 24-hour renal analyte excretion and the respective 24-hour urine volume (U-Vol) have been reported. Therefore, our objective was to investigate whether 24-hour U-Vol (a marker of fluid intake) is also a relevant influencing factor of absolute daily iodine excretion.

METHODS

Urinary iodine excretion rates were measured in repeatedly collected 24-hour urine samples of (i) 9 healthy women participating in a controlled diet experiment with constant iodine intake and (ii) 204 healthy free-living adolescents (aged 13-18 years) who performed the respective urine collection during 2003-2008. Associations between U-Vol (L) and renal iodine excretion (μg/24 h) were investigated cross sectionally (multiple linear regression model, PROC GLM) and longitudinally (repeated-measures regression models, PROC MIXED). The major iodine sources in the adolescent's diet (iodized salt, milk, fish, eggs, and meat) were controlled for.

RESULTS

Urinary iodine excretion was significantly associated with 24-hour U-Vol in all performed fully adjusted regression models. A 1-L increase of U-Vol predicted an additional 15.0 μg/day (adolescents, 95% confidence interval: [9.8, 20.0], p < 0.0001) and 16.5 μg/day (women, 95% confidence interval: [9.2, 23.7], p = 0.0002) increase in iodine excretion. The longitudinal analysis in adolescents revealed a stronger relation of iodine excretion with U-Vol in girls than in boys (β = 17.1 vs. β = 10.5).

CONCLUSION

A high fluid consumption, and thus a high U-Vol, could lead to an additional renal iodine loss that obviously cannot be compensated by the iodine contents of non-milk-based beverages, reported to amount to ∼4 μg/L, on average. For specific research questions using the biomarker 24-hour urinary iodine excretion, U-Vol should therefore be considered as a potential confounder.