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Techniques and Methods

Quantifying the human diet in the crosstalk between nutrition and health by multi-targeted metabolomics of food and microbiota-derived metabolites

International Journal of Obesity volume 44, pages 2372–2381 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background

Metabolomics is a powerful tool for investigating the association between nutrition and health status. Although urine is commonly employed for studying the metabolism and transformation of food components, the use of blood samples could be preferable to gain new insights into the bioavailability of diet-derived compounds and their involvement in health. However, the chemical complexity of blood samples hinders the analysis of this biological fluid considerably, which makes the development of novel and comprehensive analytical methods mandatory.

Methods

In this work, we optimized a multi-targeted metabolomics platform for the quantitative and simultaneous analysis of 450 food-derived metabolites by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry. To handle the chemical complexity of blood samples, three complementary extraction methods were assayed and compared in terms of recovery, sensitivity, precision and matrix effects with the aim of maximizing metabolomics coverage: protein precipitation, reversed solid-phase extraction, and hybrid protein precipitation with solid-phase extraction-mediated phospholipid removal.

Results

After careful optimization of the extraction conditions, protein precipitation enabled the most efficient and high-throughput extraction of the food metabolome in plasma, although solid-phase extraction-based protocols provided complementary performance for the analysis of specific polyphenol classes. The developed method yielded accurate recovery rates with negligible matrix effects, and good linearity, as well as high sensitivity and precision for most of the analyzed metabolites.

Conclusions

The multi-targeted metabolomics platform optimized in this work enables the simultaneous detection and quantitation of 450 dietary metabolites in short-run times using small volumes of biological sample, which facilitates its application to epidemiological studies.

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Fig. 1: Heat maps representing the recovery rates for dietary metabolites with authentic standards validated using the three extraction methods: solid phase extraction (Oasis® HLB), hybrid PPT and SPE-mediated removal of phospholipids (Ostro®) and protein precipitation (PPT).

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Acknowledgements

This work has received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO, PCIN-2015-229, PCIN-2015-238, PCIN-2017-076) under the umbrella of the European Joint Programming Initiative “A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life” (JPI HDHL, http://www.healthydietforhealthylife.eu), the CIBERFES and CIBEROBN (co-funded by the FEDER Program from EU), and from the Generalitat de Catalunya’s Agency AGAUR (2017SGR1546). RGD thanks “Juan de la Cierva” program MINECO (FJCI-2015-26590) and CAL the ICREA Academia award 2018. Authors thank to Paul Needs and Paul Kroon (Quadram Institute Bioscience) for kindly providing in-house synthesized standards.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biomarkers and Nutrimetabolomics Laboratory; Department of Nutrition, Food Sciences and Gastronomy; Food Technology Reference Net (XaRTA); Nutrition and Food Safety Research Institute (INSA); Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, University of Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Raúl González-Domínguez & Cristina Andrés-Lacueva

  2. CIBER Fragilidad y Envejecimiento Saludable (CIBERfes), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Barcelona, Spain

    Raúl González-Domínguez, Olga Jáuregui & Cristina Andrés-Lacueva

  3. Scientific and Technological Center of University of Barcelona (CCiTUB), 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Olga Jáuregui

  4. Human Nutrition Unit, Department of Food and Drugs, University of Parma, Medical School Building C, Via Volturno, 39, 43125, Parma, Italy

    Pedro Mena & Donato Angelino

  5. Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland

    Kati Hanhineva

  6. Department of Endocrinology and Nutrition, Virgen de la Victoria University Hospital, Institute of Biomedical Research in Malaga (IBIMA), Malaga, Spain

    Francisco José Tinahones

  7. CIBER Physiopathology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERobn), Institute of Health Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

    Francisco José Tinahones

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  1. Raúl González-Domínguez
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  2. Olga Jáuregui
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Correspondence to Cristina Andrés-Lacueva.

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González-Domínguez, R., Jáuregui, O., Mena, P. et al. Quantifying the human diet in the crosstalk between nutrition and health by multi-targeted metabolomics of food and microbiota-derived metabolites. Int J Obes 44, 2372–2381 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-020-0628-1

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