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Metabolomics in early life and the association with body composition at age 2 years

Inge A L P van Beijsterveldt1, Stuart G Snowden2,3, Pernille Neve Myers4,5

  • 1Department of Pediatrics, Subdivision of Endocrinology, Erasmus University Medical Center/Sophia Children's Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Pediatric Obesity
|October 13, 2021
PubMed

Insights

Infant metabolic profiles at 3 months can predict body composition at 2 years, with higher accuracy in boys. Early life metabolites are key to adiposity programming.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatric Metabolism
  • Body Composition Analysis
  • Developmental Biology

Background:

  • Early life adiposity programming is critical for long-term health.
  • Metabolic profiles in infancy may predict later-life body composition.
  • Investigating early metabolic markers for adiposity prediction is essential.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To determine if infant metabolic profiles at 3 months predict body composition at 2 years.
  • To explore sex-based differences in predictive accuracy.
  • To examine the influence of infant feeding types on this relationship.

Main Methods:

  • 318 healthy infants underwent body composition analysis (skinfold, ultrasound) at 3 months and 2 years.
  • High-throughput metabolic profiling of 3-month blood samples.
  • Random-forest machine learning models were used for prediction.

Main Results:

  • Metabolic profiles at 3 months predicted body composition (truncal:peripheral-fat-skinfold-ratio) with 75.8% accuracy.
  • Predictive value was higher in boys (Q²=0.322) than girls (Q²=0.117).
  • 11 of 15 key metabolites associated with T:P ratio also linked to visceral fat at 2 years.

Conclusions:

  • Plasma metabolites at 3 months associate with body composition at 2 years.
  • These findings underscore the significance of early infancy for adiposity programming.
  • Specific metabolites like LysoPC(22:2) and dimethylarginine are potential early indicators.
Abstract

Keywords:
adipositybody compositioninfantsmetabolomicsskinfolds

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