Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 12 pp 11914—11941
Serum metabolites associate with physical performance among middle-aged adults: Evidence from the Bogalusa Heart Study
- 1 Department of Epidemiology, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA
- 2 Department of Medicine, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, LA 70112, USA
- 3 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Georgia College of Public Health, Athens, GA 30606, USA
- 4 Institute of Clinical Medical Sciences, China-Japan Friendship Hospital, National Clinical Research Center of Respiratory Diseases, Beijing, China
- 5 Children’s Minnesota Research Institute, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, MN 55404, USA
- 6 Division of Gerontology, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA
- 7 Metabolon, Inc., Morrisville, NC 27560, USA
Received: January 3, 2020 Accepted: May 20, 2020 Published: June 1, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103362How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Nierenberg 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
Age-related declines in physical performance predict cognitive impairment, disability, chronic disease exacerbation, and mortality. We conducted a metabolome-wide association study of physical performance among Bogalusa Heart Study participants. Bonferroni corrected multivariate-adjusted linear regression was employed to examine cross-sectional associations between single metabolites and baseline gait speed (N=1,227) and grip strength (N=1,164). In a sub-sample of participants with repeated assessments of gait speed (N=282) and grip strength (N=201), significant metabolites from the cross-sectional analyses were tested for association with change in physical performance over 2.9 years of follow-up. Thirty-five and seven metabolites associated with baseline gait speed and grip strength respectively, including six metabolites that associated with both phenotypes. Three metabolites associated with preservation or improvement in gait speed over follow-up, including: sphingomyelin (40:2) (P=2.6×10-4) and behenoyl sphingomyelin (d18:1/22:0) and ergothioneine (both P<0.05). Seven metabolites associated with declines in gait speed, including: 1-carboxyethylphenylalanine (P=8.8×10-5), and N-acetylaspartate, N-formylmethionine, S-adenosylhomocysteine, N-acetylneuraminate, N2,N2-dimethylguanosine, and gamma-glutamylphenylalanine (all P<0.05). Two metabolite modules reflecting sphingolipid and bile acid metabolism associated with physical performance (minimum P=7.6×10-4). These results add to the accumulating evidence suggesting an important role of the human metabolome in physical performance and specifically implicate lipid, nucleotide, and amino acid metabolism in early physical performance decline.