Nutrient biomarkers and their definitive cut-offs are used to classify individuals as nutrient-deficient or sufficient. This determinism does not consider any uncertainty, and a probability approach, using biomarker distributions, is then preferable to define the risk of nutrition deficiency when in populations.
Healthy 1–19-year-old children and adolescents were selected from the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS), to obtain probability distributions of their retinol, zinc and vitamin B12, along with erythrocyte folate. Model-based estimates of location, scale and shape parameters of these distributions were obtained across ages. Subsequently, in the entire sample of 1–19 year old children of CNNS, the population risk of deficiency (PRD) which is average risk of deficiency in individuals in the population was computed, which is “of concern” when >50%. When individual risk of deficiency is >97.5% it is called “severe risk of deficiency” (SRD).
In the entire CNNS sample, the PRD of concern was low for serum retinol (3.6–8.2%), zinc (0–5.5%), and SRD of vitamin B12 and erythrocyte folate were 2.3–7.2% and 4.2–9.7%, respectively, across age and sex groups.
This proposed method assesses the adequacy of nutrient exposures without relying on pre-defined deterministic biomarker cut-offs to define micronutrient deficiency and avoids errors in exposure assessment.