NMR metabolomics in nutrition research

Abstract

Metabolomics provides an untargeted strategy, which has been used to evaluate the effect of dietary components on human metabolism. Epidemiological evidence indicates that increased consumption of wholegrain foods is positively associated with decreased prevalence of chronic diseases. The aim of the current work was to evaluate the application of NMR metabolomics in nutrition research, using urine and plasma samples from two short-term (postprandial) studies that evaluated responses in men and women to minimally processed wheat bran and aleurone meals, and aleurone processed into bread. The first investigations assessed the application of NMR metabolomics to assess urinary responses while the later investigations assess plasma responses in men and women consuming single meals of minimally processed wheat bran and aleurone. Results showed that there was discrimination between the urinary metabolite profiles at both one and two hours after the consumption of aleurone and bran meals compared to control meal, while there was discrimination after the consumption of aleurone meal compared to the control meal only at one hour in the plasma metabolite profiles.However, there was no clear discrimination between the aleurone and bran meals. The final investigations, which assessed the urinary responses in men and women consuming single meals of aleurone fraction incorporated into bread, showed that there was discrimination between the urinary metabolite profiles only at two hours after the control bread compared to aleurone bread. Furthermore, there were differences in urinary and plasma metabolite profiles between females and males after meal consumption throughout suggesting that gender-related differences may be important, and may need to be taken into account in metabolomics studies that assess postprandial effects. This is the first human metabolomics study exploring the gender-related differences of wholegrain meal consumption. Overall, the results indicated that metabolomics has been successful in articulating the effects of wholegrains and gender-related differences.

Date of Award	Mar 2013
Original language	English
Sponsors	Vice Chancellor's Research Scholarship (VCRS)
Supervisor	ROB WELCH (Supervisor), Sean Strain (Supervisor), Ruth Price (Supervisor) & Julie M W Wallace (Supervisor)