Forskning

September 9, 2019

A metabolomic study of biomarkers of habitual coffee intake in four European countries

A Rothwell et al, 2019. A metabolomic study of biomarkers of habitual coffee intake in four European countries, Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, published online.

ABSTRACT:

SCOPE: The goal of this work was to identify circulating biomarkers of habitual coffee intake using a metabolomic approach, and to investigate their associations with coffee intake in four European countries.

METHODS AND RESULTS: Untargeted mass spectrometry-based metabolic profiling was performed on serum samples from 451 participants of the European Prospective Investigation on Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) originating from France, Germany, Greece and Italy. Eleven coffee metabolites were found to be associated with self-reported habitual coffee intake, including 8 more strongly correlated (r = 0.25-0.51, P<10E^-07 ). Trigonelline showed the highest correlation, followed by caffeine, two caffeine metabolites (paraxanthine and 5-Acetylamino-6-amino-3-methyluracil), quinic acid, and three compounds derived from coffee roasting [cyclo(prolyl-valyl), cyclo(isoleucyl-prolyl), cyclo(leucyl-prolyl) and pyrocatechol sulfate]. Differences in the magnitude of correlations were observed between countries, with trigonelline most highly correlated with coffee intake in France and Germany, quinic acid in Greece and cyclo(isoleucyl-prolyl) in Italy.

CONCLUSION: Several biomarkers of habitual coffee intake were identified. No unique biomarker was found to be optimal for all tested populations. Instead, optimal biomarkers were shown to depend on the population and on the type of coffee consumed. These biomarkers should help to further explore the role of coffee in disease risk.