Introduction:

Magnesium is essential for multiple biological functions. The absence of specific biomarkers makes determining magnesium status a challenge. Many factors may influence magnesium intake and bioavailability, which in turn translates into latent hypomagnesemia.

Objective:

To study magnesium as an essential cation, evaluate magnesium intake and intake recommendations in different continents and Venezuela, providing a general and critical view of its current state by integrating various perspectives described in current literature.

Materials and methods:

This article consists of a Narrative Review. A search in Spanish and English in PubMed, Science Direct and Scielo using terms such as: "magnesium dietary reference intake", "dietary magnesium", "magnesium recommendations", "magnesium requirements", "magnesium intake", "magnesium status" from 1997 to present was performed.

Results:

Numerous factors affect magnesium status. In the last years, magnesium intake has declined in countries with a western diet. Nowadays, there are no recent studies that could define magnesium status in population and faced with this situation, their Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) still outdated. The DRIs have been set by institutions such as IOM-FAO/WHO-EFSA. To update these DRIs many theoretical and mathematical models have been performed, but discrepancy has been observed. DRI for Venezuela has been set under the guidance of IOM-1997 and has not been updated since then.

Conclusions:

Updating the DRIs is imperative. In Latin America, investment of human resources and capital is required

to achieve this goal with their own data.