Research Paper|Volume 10, Issue 10|pp 2624—2635

A joint analysis of metabolomic profiles associated with muscle mass and strength in Caucasian women

Qi Zhao¹, Hui Shen², Kuan-Jui Su², Qing Tian², Lan-Juan Zhao², Chuan Qiu², Timothy J. Garrett³, Jiawang Liu^4,⁵, David Kakhniashvili⁶, Hong-Wen Deng^2,⁷

¹Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN 38163, USA
²Tulane Center of Bioinformatics and Genomics, Department of Global Biostatistics and Data Science, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA
³Southeast Center for Integrated Metabolomics Core, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610, USA
⁴Medicinal Chemistry Core, Office of Research, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN 38163, USA
⁵Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN 38163, USA
⁶Proteomics and Metabolomics Core, Office of Research, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN 38163, USA
⁷School of Basic Medical Science, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan 410013, China

* * Equal contribution

Received: July 17, 2018Accepted: September 24, 2018Published: October 14, 2018

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101574

Copyright: © 2018 Zhao et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Both loss of muscle mass and strength are important sarcopenia-related traits. In this study, we investigated both specific and shared serum metabolites associated with these two traits in 136 Caucasian women using a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method. A joint analysis of multivariate traits was used to examine the associations of individual metabolites with muscle mass measured by the body mass index-adjusted appendicular lean mass (ALM/BMI) and muscle strength measured by hand grip strength (HGS). After adjusting for multiple testing, nine metabolites including two amino acids (aspartic acid and glutamic acid) and an amino acid derive (pipecolic acid), one peptide (phenylalanyl-threonine), one carbohydrate (methyl beta-D-glucopyranoside), and four lipids (12S-HETRE, arachidonic acid, 12S-HETE, and glycerophosphocholine) were significant in the joint analysis. Of them, the two amino acids (aspartic acid and glutamic acid) and two lipids (12S-HETRE and 12S-HETE) were associated with both ALM/BMI and HGS, and the other five were only associated with ALM/BMI. The pathway analysis showed the amino acid metabolism pathways (aspartic acid and glutamic acid) might play important roles in the regulation of muscle mass and strength. In conclusion, our study identified novel metabolites associated with sarcopenia-related traits, suggesting novel metabolic pathways for muscle regulation.