Towards the fecal metabolome derived from moderate red wine intake

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.-- This article belongs to the Special Issue Metabolomic Studies of the Human Gut Microbiome.Dietary polyphenols, including red wine phenolic compounds, are extensively metabolized during their passage through the gastrointestinal tract; and their biological effects at the gut level (i.e., anti-inflammatory activity, microbiota modulation, interaction with cells, among others) seem to be due more to their microbial-derived metabolites rather than to the original forms found in food. In an effort to improve our understanding of the biological effects that phenolic compounds exert at the gut level, this paper summarizes the changes observed in the human fecal metabolome after an intervention study consisting of a daily consumption of 250 mL of wine during four weeks by healthy volunteers (n = 33). It assembles data from two analytical approaches: (1) UPLC-ESI-MS/MS analysis of phenolic metabolites in fecal solutions (targeted analysis); and (2) UHPLC-TOF MS analysis of the fecal solutions (non-targeted analysis). Both approaches revealed statistically-significant changes in the concentration of several metabolites as a consequence of the wine intake. Similarity and complementarity between targeted and non-targeted approaches in the analysis of the fecal metabolome are discussed. Both strategies allowed the definition of a complex metabolic profile derived from wine intake. Likewise, the identification of endogenous markers could lead to new hypotheses to unravel the relationship between moderate wine consumption and the metabolic functionality of gut microbiota.This work has been developed in the Metabolomics Platform at CIAL (CEI UAM+CSIC), and it has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Project AGL2012-40172-C02-01). Ana Jiménez-Girón and Irene Muñoz-González thank the European Social Fund and the JAE-DOC program (CSIC) and the FPI program (MINECO), respectively, for their research contracts.We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).Peer Reviewe