In a recent study published in The Journal of Nutrition, researchers in the USA used next-generation nutrimetabolomics approaches to characterize the nutrient content of Salmon consumed as an element of the Mediterranean-style weight-reduction plan (MED). Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LCMS)-based findings revealed that Salmon plays host to 508 food-specific compounds (FSCs), 237 of which were unique. When consumed as an element of MED, Salmon confers not less than 148 FSCs and 30 metabolites, 4 of which were related to significant cardiometabolic health indicator (CHI) improvements. In summary, these findings highlight the importance of weight-reduction plan, specifically Salmon, as an untapped source of metabolites and other helpful molecules.
Study: Salmon Food-Specific Compounds and Their Metabolites Increase in Human Plasma and Are Related to Cardiometabolic Health Indicators Following a Mediterranean-Style Weight loss program Intervention. Image Credit: Elena Eryomenko / Shutterstock
The Mediterranean-style weight-reduction plan (MED) and its role in health
Chronic, non-transmittable diseases are more prevalent than ever before, fuelled by recent poor global lifestyle and weight-reduction plan changes. An enormous body of literature predicts the situation will worsen further in coming years, with the results of pollution, stress, and nutrition compounding an already dire state. Thankfully, research has also confirmed that the reply to our problems is closer than we expect and will be simpler than we thought.
Weight loss program (nutrition), sleep, and physical activity have been highlighted as probably the most critical behavioral risk determinants of most chronic ailments, including heart problems (CVD), neurological distress, mental health issues, and cancers. While studies aiming to characterize individual risk aspects and optimize the outcomes of those ‘health behaviors’ are ongoing, the profound role of those behaviors within the prevention and treatment of public health disorders is unquestionable, and a few behaviors (like regular sleep patterns) are known to be helpful while others (like smoking habits) usually are not.
Weight loss program selections have been directly implicated in ongoing obesity and obese pandemics in many of the developed world. Historically, nutrition research has attempted to ascertain the biochemical value of individual food items and the outcomes of their consumption in isolation. Newer work, nevertheless, explores dietary patterns, assemblages of unique food items generally consumed together, and the synergistic impacts of every of those individual components on overall health.
Some diets, comparable to the Western-style weight-reduction plan, wealthy in fat and sodium while being low in vegetables and fruit, have been identified as disease-risk enhancing, while others, just like the Mediterranean-style weight-reduction plan (MED), have been proven disease-preventing on account of their low processed-foods content and dependence on fresh vegetables and fruit. While MED has been shown to enhance cardiometabolic health indicators (CHIs), the person contributions of its common components remain a mystery.
“Foods comparable to Salmon are composed of 1000’s of nutritive and non-nutritive compounds that together represent the totality of dietary exposures. These compounds may function objective biomarkers of dietary intake and/or may exert physiological effects. Thus, a comprehensive evaluation of the chemical composition of foods is a critical first step to improving the assessment of dietary intake and elucidating the mechanistic underpinnings of how dietary intake affects health.”
In regards to the study
In the current study, researchers concurrently characterised the important thing nutrients and metabolics contained inside Salmon and carried out a randomized, crossover, controlled feeding trial to analyze the impacts of those molecules on obese and obese patients vulnerable to CVD. The study aimed to make use of a food-centric approach to potentially discover novel food intake biomarkers. If found, these molecules could be tested for associations with CHIs in an exploratory fashion.
The study sample comprised obese and obese American individuals (BMI 25-37 kg/m2) between the ages of 30 and 69 years, recruited from Greater Lafayette, Indiana. Inclusion criteria comprised a medical history freed from chronic metabolic diseases and current dietary patterns (specifically, a current lack of MED). Data collection at baseline was conducted following dietary washout and consisted of fasting blood samples and demographic and medical histories. Interventions comprised two servings of Salmon (~4-8 oz) per week (cases) and an equivalent portion of various unprocessed lean meat items (controls).
In parallel, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LCMS) was used to discover the metabolomic profile of Salmon and 100 other food items commonly included in MEDs. The resultant spectrometry data was processed via molecular feature annotation, and in silica metabolism, predictions were generated using the machine learning (ML) framework called BioTransmormer. Putative biomarkers identified by the ML model were reviewed, and people who met abundance thresholds were extracted from plasma samples using Profinder.
Identified biomolecules were then subject to association analyses wherein the change within the plasma levels of salmon FSCs from study initiation through its end was computed from patient plasma samples using linear mixed-effect models (LMM). If the observed changes were significant, the responsible molecules were subject to repeated tandem mass spectrometry (MMS/MS).
Study findings
Salmon characterization analyses revealed that the fish comprises 508 FSCs. Comparisons with 99 other MED food items revealed that 237 of Salmon’s metabolites were unique. Blood plasma analyses detected 106 salmon metabolites and 143 FSCs, all of which were isolated and included as intervention variables within the clinical trial.
Clinical trial results revealed that 48 salmon FSCs and 30 metabolites (28%) had their plasma concentrations significantly increase over the course of the study (five weeks). A lot of the identified molecules were found to be lipid-based.
“Previous work suggests lipids, particularly omega-3 PUFAs, are increased after controlled feeding of Salmon in addition to with habitual intake of fish. Higher concentrations of serum PUFAs have similarly been related to overall healthy dietary patterns that contain seafood, including the MED weight-reduction plan, the Nordic weight-reduction plan, the DASH weight-reduction plan, and with adherence to the USA Dietary Guidelines as assessed by the Healthy Eating Index.”
Association analyses on these biomolecules revealed that two FSCs and two metabolites were related to improved CHI scores, highlighting their cardiovascular advantages. In conclusion, the current study demonstrates the feasibility of using ML models to predict the clinical metabolism of FSCs and use that information to find out the presence and abundance of those predicted metabolites in biospecimens. Their use of the case-control methodology highlights the advantages of Salmon inside MED and paves the way in which for future research on other potentially helpful food items.
“…our results highlight the feasibility of and suggest strong potential for this comprehensive, nutrimetabolomics-based approach to the identification and testing of food biomarkers. Follow-up analyses of additional foods and future intervention work to evaluate the standard of those candidate intake biomarkers of Salmon are warranted. Additional work is warranted to judge uptake and depletion kinetics and define dose response via acute feeding trials with time-controlled sampling protocols in independent cohorts.”
Journal reference:
- Hill, E. B., Reisdorph, R. M., Rasolofomanana-Rajery, S., Michel, C., Khajeh-Sharafabadi, M., Doenges, K. A., Weaver, N., Quinn, K., Sutliff, A. K., Tang, M., Borengasser, S. J., Frank, D. N., O’Connor, L. E., Campbell, W. W., Krebs, N. F., Hendricks, A. E., & Reisdorph, N. A. (2023). Salmon Food-Specific Compounds and Their Metabolites Increase in Human Plasma and Are Related to Cardiometabolic Health Indicators Following a Mediterranean-Style Weight loss program Intervention. The Journal of Nutrition, 154(1), 26-40, DOI – 10.1016/j.tjnut.2023.10.024, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022316623726783