Evidence mapPaperPMID 41216625Full record

ArticleInternational journal of cardiology. Cardiovascular risk and prevention2025

NHANES data are irrelevant for ketogenic diet research - Comment on "Ketogenic diets are associated with an elevated risk of hypertension: Insights from a cross-sectional analysis of the NHANES 2007-2018″.

Rainer J Klement

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Article in International journal of cardiology. Cardiovascular risk and prevention, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

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No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Rainer J KlementDepartment of Radiotherapy and Radiation Oncology, Leopoldina Hospital, Teaching Hospital of the University Hospital Würzburg, Schweinfurt, Germany.

Funding

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6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In a recent study titled "Ketogenic diets are associated with an elevated risk of hypertension: Insights from a cross-sectional analysis of the NHANES 2007-2018", Qu et al. have used data from the NHANES, a large survey of American citizens, to correlate the participants' dietary ketogenic ratio (DKR) to hypertension. They find a significant positive correlation and conclude, as the title of their article suggests, that ketogenic diets (KDs) are associated to hypertension risk. However, their basic assumption that the participants' DKR has anything to do with a KD constitutes a serious mistake, as I argue in this Commentary. The reason is that even the highest quartile of DKR corresponds to a non-ketogenic diet. In conclusion, the data utilized by Qu et al. are irrelevant to their research question and cannot be used to support the hypothesis that KDs increase the risk of hypertension.

Indexed as

Ketogenic dietKetone bodiesNutritional epidemiology

Identifiers

PMID41216625
PMCPMC12596632

What Socratic holds

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.