Identification of urinary biomarkers of food intake for onion by untargeted LC-MS metabolomics

Scope: Biomarkers of food intake (BFIs) are useful tools for objective assessment of food intake and compliance. The aim of this study was to discover and identify urinary BFIs for onion. Methods and results: In a randomized controlled cross-over trial, 6 overweight participants (age 24-62 years) consumed meals with 20 g/d onion powder or no onion for 2 weeks. Untargeted UPLC-qTOF-MS metabolic profiling analysis was performed on urine samples and the profiles were analysed by multilevel-PLSDA, modified PLS, and nearest shrunken centroid to select features associated with onion intake. Eight biomarkers were tentatively identified; six of them originated from S-substituted cysteine derivatives such as isoalliin and propiin, which are considered the most specific for onion intake. Most of the biomarkers were completely excreted within 24 hours and no accumulation was observed during 2 weeks indicating their ability to reflect only recent intake of onions. Receiver-operator curves were made to evaluate the performance of individual biomarkers for predicting onion intake. The area under the curve values for these biomarkers ranged from 0.81 to 1. Conclusion: Promising biomarkers of recent onion intake have been identified in human urine. Further studies with complex diets are needed to validate the robustness of these biomarkers

Phylogenetic and Metabolic Tracking of Gut Microbiota during Perinatal Development

The colonization and development of gut microbiota immediately after birth is highly variable and depends on several factors, such as delivery mode and modality of feeding during the first months of life. A cohort of 31 mother and neonate pairs, including 25 at-term caesarean (CS) and 6 vaginally (V) delivered neonates (DNs), were included in this study and 121 meconium/faecal samples were collected at days 1 through 30 following birth. Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) were assessed in 69 stool samples by phylogenetic microarray HITChip and inter- and intra-individual distributions were established by inter-OTUs correlation matrices and OTUs co-occurrence or co-exclusion networks. H-1-NMR metabolites were determined in 70 stool samples, PCA analysis was performed on 55 CS DNs samples, and metabolome/OTUs co-correlations were assessed in 45 CS samples, providing an integrated map of the early microbiota OTUs-metabolome. A microbiota "core" of OTUs was identified that was independent of delivery mode and lactation stage, suggesting highly specialized communities that act as seminal colonizers of microbial networks. Correlations among OTUs, metabolites, and OTUs-metabolites revealed metabolic profiles associated with early microbial ecological dynamics, maturation of milk components, and host physiology.Peer reviewe

Conformational Altered p53 as an Early Marker of Oxidative Stress in Alzheimer's Disease

In order to study oxidative stress in peripheral cells of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, immortalized lymphocytes derived from two peculiar cohorts of patients, referring to early onset AD (EOSAD) and subjects harboured AD related mutation (ADmut), were used. Oxidative stress was evaluated measuring i) the typical oxidative markers, such as HNE Michel adducts, 3 Nitro-Tyrosine residues and protein carbonyl on protein extracts, ii) and the antioxidant capacity, following the enzymatic kinetic of superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and glutathione reductase (GRD). We found that the signs of oxidative stress, measured as oxidative marker levels, were evident only in ADmut but not in EOSAD patients. However, oxidative imbalance in EOSAD as well as ADmut lymphocytes was underlined by a reduced SOD activity and GRD activity in both pathological groups in comparison with cells derived from healthy subjects. Furthermore, a redox modulated p53 protein was found conformational altered in both EOSAD and ADmut B lymphocytes in comparison with control cells. This conformational altered p53 isoform, named “unfolded p53”, was recognized by the use of two specific conformational anti-p53 antibodies. Immunoprecipitation experiments, performed with the monoclonal antibodies PAb1620 (that recognizes p53wt) and PAb240 (that is direct towards unfolded p53), and followed by the immunoblotting with anti-4-hydroxynonenal (HNE) and anti- 3-nitrotyrosine (3NT) antibodies, showed a preferential increase of nitrated tyrosine residues in unfolded p53 isoform comparing to p53 wt protein, in both ADmut and EOSAD. In addition, a correlation between unfolded p53 and SOD activity was further found. Thus this study suggests that ROS/RNS contributed to change of p53 tertiary structure and that unfolded p53 can be considered as an early marker of oxidative imbalance in these patients

"A non-targeted metabolic profiling”di radici rigenerate in vitro di Hypericum perforatum L.

In the present study, a metabolomic platform, which integrates an nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolic profiling and analysis of variance-simultaneous component analysis (ASCA), has been applied in order to characterize the changes of the primary and secondary metabolism of H. perforatum regenerated roots induced by an achieved high biomass density in a confined growth environment or in response to chitosan treatment.The ASCA modelling applied to NMR-based metabolic profiling allowed to recognize the effects due to biomass growth rate changes and chitosan treatment

Exploring human breast milk composition by NMR-based metabolomics

Breast milk is a complex fluid evolutionarily adapted to satisfy the nutritional requirements of growing infants. In addition, milk biochemical and immunological components protect newborns against infective agents in the new environment. Human milk oligosaccharides, the third most abundant component of breast milk, are believed to modulate the microbiota composition, thus influencing a wide range of physiological processes of the infant. Human milk also contains a number of other bioactive compounds, the functional role of which has not yet been clearly elucidated. In this scenario, NMR-based metabolic profiling can provide a rapid characterisation of breast milk composition, thus allowing a better understanding of its nutritional properties

A 1-H NMR-BASED METABOLOMIC APPROACH REVEALS SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN BREAST MILK COMPOSITION INDUCED BY ORAL PROBIOTIC SUPPLEMENTATION

Pregnancy and the first two years of life are the most critical time periods for interventions to improve child growth and development. In this scenario, both the microbiota and breast milk which are ‘transmitted’ from mother to infant seem to play a crucial role for the promotion of a healthy growth in newborn. Perinatal supplementation with probiotics has been recently proposed as a possible strategy to manipulate maternal physiology, from gut microbiota to breast milk composition, in order to orchestrate the infant development. In this study, we applied a 1H NMR-based metabolomic approach to characterize the breast milk metabolome and possible changes in breast milk composition induced by oral supplementation with VSL#3 probiotic mixture. Our metabolomic approach revealed a systemic effect of the maternal probiotic supplementation on the production or secretion of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) and lipids in the mammary gland. Such an approach may become increasingly useful as a tool to design and evaluate dietary and therapeutic strategies aimed at improving the health status of the mother-infant dyad