Abstract

The accurate assessment of dietary intake is crucial to investigate the effect of diet on health. Currently used methods, relying on self-reporting and food composition data, are known to have limitations and might not be suitable to estimate the intake of many bioactive food components. An alternative are nutritional biomarkers, which can allow an unbiased assessment of intake. They require a careful evaluation of their suitability, including: (a) the availability of a precise, accurate and robust analytical method, (b) their specificity (c) a consistent relationship with actual intake. We have evaluated human metabolites of a microbiome-derived flavan-3-ol catabolite, 5-(3′,4′-dihydroxyphenyl)-[gamma]-valerolactone (gVL), as biomarker of flavan-3-ol intake in large epidemiological studies. Flavan-3-ols are widely consumed plant bioactives, which have received considerable interest due to their potential ability to reduce CVD risk. The availability of authentic standards allowed the development of a validated high-throughput method suitable for large-scale studies. In dietary intervention studies, we could show that gVL metabolites are specific for flavan-3-ols present in tea, fruits, wine and cocoa-derived products, with a strong correlation between intake and biomarker (Spearman’s r = 0.90). This biomarker will allow for the first time to estimate flavan-3-ol intake and further investigation of associations between intake and disease risk.

Details

Title
Evaluation at scale of microbiome-derived metabolites as biomarker of flavan-3-ol intake in epidemiological studies
Author
Ottaviani, Javier I 1 ; Redmond Fong 2 ; Kimball, Jennifer 2 ; Ensunsa, Jodi L 2 ; Britten, Abigail 3 ; Lucarelli, Debora 3 ; Luben, Robert 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Grace, Philip B 5 ; Mawson, Deborah H 5 ; Tym, Amy 5 ; Wierzbicki, Antonia 5 ; Kay-Tee Khaw 4 ; Schroeter, Hagen 1 ; Kuhnle, Gunter G C 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  Mars, Inc., McLean, VA, USA 
2  Department of Nutrition, UC Davis, CA, USA 
3  MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 
4  Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK 
5  LGC, Newmarket Road, Fordham, UK 
6  Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK 
Pages
1-11
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Jun 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-28333-w
ProQuest document ID
2061820413
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.