Critical issues on magnesium status and magnesium assessment, from cell to clinic

André Mazur (1)

1 UNH - Unité de Nutrition Humaine

This speech will introduce a roundtable on the assessment of magnesium status, focusing on current knowledge and future trends. Suboptimal magnesium intake in a large part of the population in western countries supports an increased risk of latent magnesium deficiency. This mild and chronic deficiency is linked to a wide spectrum of health disorders that can be considered nonspecific and can lead to progressive and severe health deterioration, especially cardiometabolic diseases. In turn, several pathophysiological conditions e.g. metabolic syndrome, obesity, type 2 diabetes, stress and dysfunctions related to aging can contribute and aggravate chronic magnesium deficiency. The diagnosis of latent deficiency is difficult because of nonspecific clinical symptoms and magnesemia often within reference intervals. Current clinical laboratory tests are almost limited to total serum magnesium. Less frequently ionized serum magnesium, red blood cell magnesium and urinary excretion of magnesium are measured. However, the assessment of magnesium status to diagnose latent deficiency remains problematic because only subtle changes occur in these parameters and there is a large inter-individual variability. Magnesium is primarily an intracellular cation and is found mainly in bone and soft tissues. Therefore, it is difficult to develop a rapid and robust test representative of intracellular magnesium or body magnesium in humans. The purpose of the presentation and the roundtable is to discuss progress in various areas (chemistry, molecular biology, mass spectrometry), offering great opportunities for the development of new methods for evaluating magnesium status, e.g. use of stable isotopes of magnesium, new dyes for intracellular magnesium or magnesium metabolism related gene expression measurements. In addition, it can be considered that magnesium deficiency diagnosis and deficiency risk patterns can be obtained from combined data composed of questionnaires, laboratory tests and physiological measurements.

Domaines: Alimentation et Nutrition

André Mazur. Critical issues on magnesium status and magnesium assessment, from cell to clinic. XV International Magnesium Symposium : Magnesium in Health and Disease, SDRM International Society for the Development of the Research on Magnesium., Mar 2019, NIH – Bethesda, United States. ⟨hal-02381919⟩