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  • Original Article
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Twenty-four-hour urinary thiamine as a biomarker for the assessment of thiamine intake

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition volume 62, pages 1139–1147 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Objective:

To investigate 24-h urinary thiamine as a potential biomarker for thiamine intake for use in validation studies to assess the validity of dietary intake data collected by self-reporting dietary methods.

Subjects:

Seven male and six female healthy participants living for 30 days in a metabolic suite under strictly controlled conditions consuming their usual diet as assessed beforehand from four consecutive 7-day food diaries kept at home. During the 30-day study, all 24-h urine specimens were collected, validated for their completeness and analysed for thiamine.

Results:

Thirty-day mean (±s.d.) calculated thiamine intake was 2.22±0.55 mg/day. Thirty-day mean (±s.d.) urinary excretion of thiamine was 526.5±193.0 μg/day (24.7±8.10% of intake). There was a highly significant correlation between individuals' 30-day means of thiamine intake and their mean excretion level (r=0.720; P=0.006), where 1 mg of thiamine intake predicted 268.2 μg of thiamine in urine. The correlations between intake and excretion remained significant when measurement from a single 24-h urine collection was used (r=0.56).

Conclusion:

Twenty-four-hour urinary thiamine can be used as a concentration biomarker for thiamine intake in dietary validation studies.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the volunteers who participated in the study, our diet technicians Judith Wills and Valerie Church for preparing the study diets and taking care of the volunteers, and Anna-Maria Bedford for doing some of the thiamine analyses in urine. This study was funded by grants from the World Cancer Research Fund and the UK Medical Research Council.

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Author notes

  1. N Tasevska

    Present address: 3Current address: King's College London, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, London, UK.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. MRC Dunn Human Nutrition Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    N Tasevska, S A Runswick, A McTaggart & S A Bingham

  2. Institute of Public Health, Strangeways Research Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    A McTaggart & S A Bingham

Authors
  1. N Tasevska
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  2. S A Runswick
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  3. A McTaggart
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  4. S A Bingham
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to S A Bingham.

Additional information

Contributors: NT was involved in the study design, processed the dietary data, did the statistical analysis, interpreted the data and drafted the manuscript. NT and SAR recruited the subjects and were responsible for data collection and urine analysis. SAR introduced the method for urinary thiamine analysis. AMT helped with processing of the dietary data. SAB obtained the funding, initiated and supervised the project, designed the study and revised the manuscript. SAR and AMT commented on the manuscript. None of the authors had a conflict of interest.

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Tasevska, N., Runswick, S., McTaggart, A. et al. Twenty-four-hour urinary thiamine as a biomarker for the assessment of thiamine intake. Eur J Clin Nutr 62, 1139–1147 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602829

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