Correspondence of Folate Dietary Intake and Biomarker Data

Background: Public health concerns of both low and high folate status exist in the U.S. Recent publications have questioned the utility of self-reported dietary intake data in research and monitoring.

Objective: The purpose of this analysis was to examine the relationship between self-reported folate intakes and folate status biomarkers, and to evaluate their usefulness for several types of applications.

Design: Usual dietary intakes of folate were examined using the National Cancer Institute (NCI) method to adjust 2, 24-hour dietary recalls (including dietary supplements) for within-person variation and compared these intakes with serum and red blood cell (RBC) folate among 4,878 non-pregnant, non-lactating participants ≥19y in NHANES 2011-2012, a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey, with respect to consistency across prevalence estimates and rank order comparisons.