To investigate the relationship between dietary microorganism intake and mortality risk among hypertensive adults with depression in the United States.
This study utilizes data from the 2005-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, focusing on individuals with hypertension. The Kaplan-Meier (K-M) curve is employed to preliminarily explore the relationship between dietary microorganism intake, depression, and mortality risk in hypertensive individuals. The Cox proportional hazards model is used for both individual and combined analyses of these relationships. Mediation analysis assesses the mediating effect of depression on the association between dietary microorganisms and mortality, while subgroup and sensitivity analysis evaluates the stability of the model.
This cohort study included 11,602 hypertensive participants (5,904 men and 5,698 women), with 1,201 having depression. During follow-up period, 2,085 died from all causes, 692 due to cardiovascular events. Preliminary analysis using the K-M curve reveals that hypertensive individuals with higher dietary microorganism intake and those without depression have lower mortality risks. Cox proportional hazards model analysis shows that increased dietary microorganism intake is associated with reduced mortality risk in hypertensive individuals (HR=0.654, 95%CI: 0.555-0.771; HR:0.675, 95%CI: 0.472,0.967). High intake of diets rich in dietary microorganisms may mitigate the ALL-cause mortality risk of depression in hypertensive populations(HR=0.493, 95%CI: 0.256-0.947). Mediation analysis revealed that depression serves as a partial mediator in the process of dietary microorganisms improving the long – term prognosis of the hypertensive population. Results of subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis showed that the beneficial effect of dietary microorganism intake on prognosis remained stable in most of the hypertensive population.
Patients with depression among those suffering from hypertension can reduce the risk of all-cause mortality caused by depression by increasing their intake of dietary microorganisms. This provides clinicians with a new non-pharmacological intervention approach and offers a direction for the optimization of clinical combined treatment regimens.

© 2025. The Author(s).