Metabolomics reveals sex‐specific pathways associated with changes in adiposity and muscle mass in a cohort of Mexican adolescents

Abstract

Summary Background Alterations in body composition (BC) during adolescence relates to future metabolic risk, yet underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Objectives To assess the association between the metabolome with changes in adiposity (body mass index [BMI], waist circumference [WC], triceps skinfold [TS], fat percentage [BF%]) and muscle mass (MM). Methods In Mexican adolescents (n = 352), untargeted serum metabolomics was profiled at baseline. and data were reduced by pairing hierarchical clustering with confirmatory factor analysis, yielding 30 clusters with 51 singleton metabolites. At the baseline and follow‐up visits (1.6–3.5 years apart), anthropometry was collected to identify associations between baseline metabolite clusters and change in BC (∆) using seemingly unrelated and linear regression. Results Between visits, MM increased in boys and adiposity increased in girls. Sex differences were observed between metabolite clusters and changes in BC. In boys, aromatic amino acids (AAA), branched chain amino acids (BCAA) and fatty acid oxidation metabolites were associated with increases in ∆BMI, and ∆BF%. Phospholipids were associated with decreases in ∆TS and ∆MM. Negative associations were observed for ∆MM in boys with a cluster including AAA and BCAA, whereas positive associations were found for a cluster containing tryptophan metabolites. Few associations were observed between metabolites and BC change in girls, with one cluster comprising methionine, proline and lipids associated with decreases in ∆BMI, ∆WC and ∆MM. Conclusion Sex‐specific associations between the metabolome and change in BC were observed, highlighting metabolic pathways underlying adolescent physical growth.

Running in Natural Spaces: Gender Analysis of Its Relationship with Emotional Intelligence, Psychological Well-Being, and Physical Activity

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“…Ornithine is involved in the urea cycle, and its increase could indicate a rise in the urea cycle to eliminate ammonia produced by amino acid degradation during chronic training [51]. In males, but not in females, branched chain amino acids have been associated with an increase in body mass, as reported by Rodriguez-Carmona et al [52], and in our experimental conditions, we found a significant increase in L-valine and L-threonine in the saliva of male athletes only. As expected, in male athletes, a training-related metabolic pathway is associated with valine, leucine, and isoleucine biosynthesis, considering that branched chain amino acids are associated with an increase in skeletal muscle mass, which is related to sex-specific differences in whole body muscle mass [53][54][55].…”

metabCombiner 2.0: Disparate Multi-Dataset Feature Alignment for LC-MS Metabolomics

“…We also demonstrate batchCombine on metabolomics data from ELEMENT, a wellcharacterized birth-cohort study that collected fasting serum from 402 Mexico City adolescents [13,19]. Samples were partitioned into eight batches, each composed of roughly fifty subject samples and nine pooled QCs.…”

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