The objective of this study was to identify urinary metabolite profiles that discriminate between high and low intake of dietary protein during a dietary intervention. Seventy-seven overweight, non-diabetic subjects followed an 8-week low-calorie diet (LCD) and were then randomly assigned to a high (HP) or low (LP) protein diet for 6 months. Twenty-four hours urine samples were collected at baseline (prior to the 8-week LCD) and after dietary intervention; at months 1, 3 and 6, respectively. Metabolite profiling was performed by (1)H NMR and chemometrics. Using partial least squares regression (PLS), it was possible to develop excellent prediction models for urinary nitrogen (root mean square error of cross validation (RMSECV) = 1.63 mmol/L; r = 0.89) and urinary creatinine (RMSECV = 0.66 mmol/L; r = 0.98). The obtained high correlations firmly establish the validity of the metabolomic approach since urinary nitrogen is a well established biomarker for daily protein consumption. The models showed that trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) is correlated to urinary nitrogen. Furthermore, urinary creatine was found to be increased by the HP diet whereas citric acid was increased by the LP diet. Despite large variations in individual dietary intake, differentiated metabolite profiles were observed at the dietary group-level.
Keywords: NMR spectroscopy; chemometrics; dietary intervention; dietary protein; metabolite profiles; metabolomics.