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Metabotypes of flavan-3-ol colonic metabolites after cranberry intake: elucidation and statistical approaches.

Human Nutrition Unit, Department of Food & Drug, University of Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43125, Parma, Italy. pedro.mena@unipr.it. Human Nutrition Unit, Department of Food & Drug, University of Parma, Via Volturno 39, 43125, Parma, Italy. College of Medical and Dental Sciences, Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, Centre for Computational Biology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK. Institute of Translational Medicine, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS, Foundation Trust, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK. NIHR Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre, University Hospital Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2WB, UK. Department of Food & Drug, University of Parma, Parma, Italy. Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King's College London, London, UK. School of Advanced Studies On Food and Nutrition, University of Parma, Parma, Italy.

European journal of nutrition. 2022;(3):1299-1317
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Abstract

PURPOSE Extensive inter-individual variability exists in the production of flavan-3-ol metabolites. Preliminary metabolic phenotypes (metabotypes) have been defined, but there is no consensus on the existence of metabotypes associated with the catabolism of catechins and proanthocyanidins. This study aims at elucidating the presence of different metabotypes in the urinary excretion of main flavan-3-ol colonic metabolites after consumption of cranberry products and at assessing the impact of the statistical technique used for metabotyping. METHODS Data on urinary concentrations of phenyl-γ-valerolactones and 3-(hydroxyphenyl)propanoic acid derivatives from two human interventions has been used. Different multivariate statistics, principal component analysis (PCA), cluster analysis, and partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), have been considered. RESULTS Data pre-treatment plays a major role on resulting PCA models. Cluster analysis based on k-means and a final consensus algorithm lead to quantitative-based models, while the expectation-maximization algorithm and clustering according to principal component scores yield metabotypes characterized by quali-quantitative differences in the excretion of colonic metabolites. PLS-DA, together with univariate analyses, has served to validate the urinary metabotypes in the production of flavan-3-ol metabolites and to confirm the robustness of the methodological approach. CONCLUSIONS This work proposes a methodological workflow for metabotype definition and highlights the importance of data pre-treatment and clustering methods on the final outcomes for a given dataset. It represents an additional step toward the understanding of the inter-individual variability in flavan-3-ol metabolism. TRIAL REGISTRATION The acute study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02517775, August 7, 2015; the chronic study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02764749, May 6, 2016.