Serum Levels of Choline-Containing Compounds Are Associated with Aerobic Fitness Level: The HUNT-Study

Abstract

BackgroundCardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of death worldwide, and the number of people at risk is continuously growing. New methods for early risk prediction are therefore needed to actuate prevention strategies before the individuals are diagnosed with CVD. Several studies report that aerobic fitness level, measured as maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), is the single best predictor of future CVD mortality in healthy people. Based on this, we wanted to study differences between healthy individuals with a large difference in VO2max-level to identify new biomarkers of low aerobic fitness that may also have potential as early biomarkers of CVD risk.Methodology/Principal FindingsSerum samples from 218 healthy individuals with a low VO2max (n = 108, 63 women) or high VO2max (n = 110, 64 women) were analysed with MR metabolomics. In addition, standard clinical-chemical analyses for glucose, lipids, liver enzymes, micro-CRP, and colorimetric analysis on circulating choline were performed. Individuals in the low VO2max-group had increased serum levels of free choline, decreased phosphatidylcholine, increased glucosę and decreased unsaturated fatty acids compared to the individuals in the high VO2max–group.Conclusions/SignificanceAerobic fitness dependent differences in serum levels of free choline and phosphatidylcholine are observed. They should be further studied as potential early markers of CVD risk.

NMR-Based Serum Metabolomics Discriminates Takayasu Arteritis from Healthy Individuals: A Proof-of-Principle Study

“…Other explanation for the high levels of serum choline in TA patients may be release of choline from damaged/injured arteries in agreement with previous reports showing choline release from ischemic tissues into the blood stream in patients with severe repetitive arrhythmias and hemodynamiccompromises [59][60][61]. High serum levels of free choline have also been associated with an increased prevalence of the metabolic syndrome (a cluster of risk factors of cardiovascular diseases)62 and in healthy individuals with a low aerobic fitness (a kind of hypoxia) 57,58,63. As TA patients fulfil various criteria i.e.…”

Non-targeted metabolomics in sport and exercise science

“…A further study comparing distinct categorised groups of low and high fitness demonstrated that the low fitness group had lower levels of phosphatidylcholine and increased free choline (approximately 1.5-fold, p = 0.017, Bye et al, 2012). Circulating free choline has recently been implicated in cardiovascular disease (Wang et al, 2014) and is known to be metabolised by the gut microbiome to form an intermediary in the production of trimethylamine N-oxide (Wang et al, 2011), a small molecule metabolite associated with reduced survival in conditions such as heart failure and myocardial infarction (Suzuki, Heaney, Bhandari, Jones, & Ng, 2016;Tang et al, 2014).…”

Proton magnetic resonance metabolomic characterization of ovarian serous carcinoma effusions: chemotherapy-related effects and comparison with malignant mesothelioma and breast carcinoma

“…The samples were slowly thawed at room temperature. Aliquots of 300 µL were mixed with equal amount of buffer solution as described elsewhere 8 . Samples were then transferred to highquality 5 mm MR tubes.…”

“…Metabolic profiling of biofluids can provide an extensive view of changes in endogenous metabolites in monitoring cellular responses to perturbations such as normal physiology, diseases and drug treatments [4][5][6][7][8] . Metabolomics have been successfully used in the detection of biomarkers 4 associated with various clinical conditions such as detection of ovarian cancers [9][10][11][12][13] and in differentiating benign and malignant ascites 14 .…”