Long-term nutritional trends in the Finnish population estimated from a large laboratory database from 1987 to 2020

Abstract

The assessments of malnutrition in adults with MUST or NRS-2002 criteria do not give a detailed insight into the sufficiency of micronutrients. Sufficiency assessment of essential micronutrients on the individual level can be achieved only with laboratory measurements. The aim of this study was to estimate long-term trends in micronutrient sufficiency in the Finnish population with regards to gender and sex covariates. We retrieved from the clinical laboratory database (n = 67,236) all results on whole blood Magnesium, (B-Mg), Manganese (B-Mn), Zinc (B-Zn), Selenium (B-Se) and Copper from erythrocytes (E-Cu) and fasting serum β-carotenes (fS-BKarot), vitamin A (fS-A-vit), coenzyme Q10 (Ubiquinone, fS-Q10) and serum vitamin D (S-D-25) from the database of clinical laboratory Mineraalilaboratorio Mila Oy from the years 1987–2020. A weak positive linear trend is seen for B-Mg, B-Zn and ln(fS-Q10) both for children and adults, but a moderate linear positive trend was observed for ln(S-D-25) based on correlation between calendar year and ln(S-D-25), R = 0.44 and 0.41, p < 0.001 for adults and children, respectively. Laboratory database is helpful to monitor the nutritional public policy to prevent hidden malnutrition in the society.

Selenium Status of Southern Africa

“…In other studies, increased selenium intake by humans has been associated with reduced cancer risks, and further research is being conducted to prove or refute this hypothesis [8,17,36,62]. In this regard, selenium is seen to have various health benefits, but a low or diminishing selenium status in some parts of the world has been noticed, with some African, Asian, and European countries showing signs of great concern to health organizations [15,18,55,63]. Lack of selenium has been linked to many diseases due to reduced functions of glutathione peroxidase, coma, sudden death syndrome for infants, asthma, and irregular heartbeats [16,54].…”

“…The biofortification program was very successful by early 1990 in increasing plant concentrations of selenium, and levels of selenium in humans increased, leading to an improvement in the health status of the population. After observing all the benefits in the population, Finland adopted 6 mg Se/kg fertilizer as the application rate for all crops and later moved to 10 mg Se/kg [55,63]. Despite the public health measures done in Finland, [63] could not observe any positive linear trend for blood selenium over the years in a large laboratory database from 1987 to 2020 of Finnish people who were under study; this could be due to having outdated methods of analysis in the previous years.…”

“…After observing all the benefits in the population, Finland adopted 6 mg Se/kg fertilizer as the application rate for all crops and later moved to 10 mg Se/kg [55,63]. Despite the public health measures done in Finland, [63] could not observe any positive linear trend for blood selenium over the years in a large laboratory database from 1987 to 2020 of Finnish people who were under study; this could be due to having outdated methods of analysis in the previous years. However, with proven success stories of countries like Finland, populations in Southern Africa can utilize biofortification as a tool that will improve the selenium levels and health status of its populations.…”