Health aspects of magnesium status and supplementation

In this thesis, we compared analytic methods for the assessment of magnesium status and we investigated health aspects of magnesium status and magnesium supplementation. We found that intra-erythrocyte magnesium can be calculated by means of an indirect method, eliminating labor-intensive sample preparation. Furthermore, our results highlight that ionized plasma magnesium can be accurately obtained from nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy spectra, while testing for routine lipoprotein quantification. This may add to overall cost saving and saving of precious samples. Furthermore, we have shown that lower plasma ionized magnesium was associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes in women, but not in men.In a post-hoc analysis using samples of a biobank underlying a randomized clinical trial in which magnesium citrate supplementation was compared to placebo, we found that magnesium supplementation beneficially affects glucocorticoid metabolism, consistent with relieve of stress by magnesium supplementation. In a multi-arm randomized clinical trial that we performed, we found that arterial stiffness and blood pressure remained unchanged after magnesium supplementation for 24-wk. In a subgroup analysis, we observed a significant effect of magnesium sulfate supplementation towards decreased arterial stiffness in individuals with prevalent increased arterial stiffness at baseline. Our subgroup analysis suggests that it is feasible to further investigate potential effects of magnesium supplementation on arterial stiffness in a population with increased arterial stiffness at start of the study, like for instance patients with chronic kidney disease, patients with cardiovascular disease or patients with diabetes