Molecular effects of the consumption of margarine and butter varying in trans fat composition: a parallel human intervention study

• Published in: Lipids in health and disease Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 74 - 19
• Main Authors: Guggisberg, Dominik, Burton-Pimentel, Kathryn J., Walther, Barbara, Badertscher, René, Blaser, Carola, Portmann, Reto, Schmid, Alexandra, Radtke, Thomas, Saner, Hugo, Fournier, Nadine, Bütikofer, Ueli, Vergères, Guy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London BioMed Central 18.08.2022; BioMed Central Ltd; BMC
• Subjects: Biomarkers; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Blood; Blood cells; Blood lipids; Butter; Cardiovascular disease; Cardiovascular diseases; Chemical properties; Cholesterol; Chromatography; Circulating lipids; Clinical Nutrition; Diabetes mellitus (non-insulin dependent); Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2; Diet; Dietary fat; Dietary Fats - pharmacology; Dietary intake; DNA microarrays; Energy; Energy intake; Energy requirements; Fatty acids; Gene expression; Health aspects; Humans; Hydrogenation; Identification and classification; Inflammation; Intervention; Ionization; Life Sciences; Lipid metabolism; Lipidology; Low density lipoprotein; Margarine; Mass spectrometry; Medical Biochemistry; Metabolome; Milk; Nutrition research; Oils & fats; Physiological aspects; Scientific imaging; Serum levels; Trans Fatty Acids; Transcriptome; Transcriptomes; Switzerland; Circulating lipids; Metabolome; Margarine; fatty acids; Butter; Transcriptome; Trans fatty acids
• ISSN: 1476-511X; 1476-511X
• DOI: 10.1186/s12944-022-01675-1

Background Whereas the dietary intake of industrial trans fatty acids (iTFA) has been specifically associated with inflammation, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes, understanding the impact of dietary fats on human health remains challenging owing to their complex composition and individual effects of their lipid components on metabolism. The aim of this study is to profile the composition of blood, measured by the fatty acid (FAs) profile and untargeted metabolome of serum and the transcriptome of blood cells, in order to identify molecular signatures that discriminate dietary fat intakes. Methods In a parallel study, the molecular effects of consuming dairy fat containing ruminant TFA (rTFA) or margarine containing iTFA were investigated. Healthy volunteers ( n  = 42; 45–69 y) were randomly assigned to diets containing margarine without TFA as major source of fat (wTFA control group with 0.4 g TFA per 100 g margarine), margarine with iTFA (iTFA group with 4.1 g TFA per 100 g margarine), or butter with rTFA (rTFA group with 6.3 g TFA per 100 g butter) for 4 weeks. The amounts of test products were individually selected so that fat intake contributed to 30–33% of energy requirements and TFA in the rTFA and iTFA groups contributed to up to 2% of energy intake. Changes in fasting blood values of lipid profiles (GC with flame-ionization detection), metabolome profiles (LC-MS, GC-MS), and gene expression (microarray) were measured. Results Eighteen FAs, as well as 242 additional features measured by LC-MS (185) and GC-MS (54) showed significantly different responses to the diets (P FDR-adjusted  < 0.05), mainly distinguishing butter from the margarine diets while gene expression was not differentially affected. The most abundant TFA in the butter, i.e. TFA containing (E)-octadec-11-enoic acid (C18:1 t11; trans vaccenic acid), and margarines, i.e. TFA containing (E)-octadec-9-enoic acid (C18:1 t9; elaidic acid) were reflected in the significantly different serum levels of TFAs measured after the dietary interventions. Conclusions The untargeted serum metabolome differentiates margarine from butter intake although the identification of the discriminating features remains a bottleneck. The targeted serum FA profile provides detailed information on specific molecules differentiating not only butter from margarine intake but also diets with different content of iTFAs in margarine. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00933322.