Assessing a Fermented Whey Beverage Biofortified with Folate as a Potential Folate Source for Humans.

Folate, a vital water-soluble vitamin (B), requires specific attention as its recommended daily intake frequently is not reached in countries without mandatory fortification. In this regard, biofortification with microorganisms like Bifidobacterium and Streptococcus offers a compelling approach for enhancing food with natural folates. A randomized, nonblinded, and monocentric human pilot study is conducted to assess the bioavailability of a folate-biofortified fermented whey beverage, comprising 3 intervention days and a controlled replenishment phase before and during the assay.

The HuMet Repository: Watching human metabolism at work.

Metabolism oscillates between catabolic and anabolic states depending on food intake, exercise, or stresses that change a multitude of metabolic pathways simultaneously. We present the HuMet Repository for exploring dynamic metabolic responses to oral glucose/lipid loads, mixed meals, 36-h fasting, exercise, and cold stress in healthy subjects. Metabolomics data from blood, urine, and breath of 15 young, healthy men at up to 56 time points are integrated and embedded within an interactive web application, enabling researchers with and without computational expertise to search, visualize, analyze, and contextualize the dynamic metabolite profiles of 2,656 metabolites acquired on multiple platforms.

Individualized Supplementation of Immunoactive Micronutrients and Severity of Upper Respiratory Infection Symptoms-A Randomized Intervention Study.

Certain micronutrients exhibit immunomodulatory effects. However, no intervention has yet investigated the effect of individualized supplementation on the severity of upper respiratory tract infections (URIs). Therefore, we investigated whether a personalized supplementation moderates the incidence and severity of URI.

The gut commensal Blautia maintains colonic mucus function under low-fiber consumption through secretion of short-chain fatty acids.

Beneficial gut bacteria are indispensable for developing colonic mucus and fully establishing its protective function against intestinal microorganisms. Low-fiber diet consumption alters the gut bacterial configuration and disturbs this microbe-mucus interaction, but the specific bacteria and microbial metabolites responsible for maintaining mucus function remain poorly understood. By using human-to-mouse microbiota transplantation and ex vivo analysis of colonic mucus function, we here show as a proof-of-concept that individuals who increase their daily dietary fiber intake can improve the capacity of their gut microbiota to prevent diet-mediated mucus defects.

Consumption of Roasted Coffee Leads to Conjugated Metabolites of Atractyligenin in Human Plasma.

Roasted coffee contains atractyligenin-2--β-d-glucoside and 3'--β-d-glucosyl-2'--isovaleryl-2--β-d-glucosylatractyligenin, which are ingested with the brew. Known metabolites are atractyligenin, atractyligenin-19--β-d-glucuronide (), 2β-hydroxy-15-oxoatractylan-4α-carboxy-19--β-d-glucuronide (), and 2β-hydroxy-15-oxoatractylan-4α-carboxylic acid-2--β-d-glucuronide (), but the appearance and pharmacokinetic properties are unknown. Therefore, first time-resolved quantitative data of atractyligenin glycosides and their metabolites in plasma samples from a pilot human intervention study ( = 10) were acquired.

Benefits of Fiber-Enriched Foods on Satiety and Parameters of Human Well-Being in Adults with and without Cardiometabolic Risk.

Consumption of fiber-rich foods is linked to beneficial effects on chronic diseases and gut health, while implications towards improving satiety and parameters of well-being remain unclear. A randomized placebo-controlled intervention study was conducted to compare the effects of fiber-enriched foods to their non-enriched counterparts in adults over a 12-week period on selected clinical parameters-satiety, quality of life, body sensation, and life satisfaction-subjective health status, and importance of diet for well-being. Quality of life (QOL) differed significantly between intervention and control groups at baseline, throughout, and at the end of the study.

The HuMet Repository: Watching human metabolism at work.

The human metabolism constantly responds to stimuli such as food intake, fasting, exercise, and stress, triggering adaptive biochemical processes across multiple metabolic pathways. To understand the role of these processes and disruptions thereof in health and disease, detailed documentation of healthy metabolic responses is needed but still scarce on a time-resolved metabolome-wide level. Here, we present the HuMet Repository, a web-based resource for exploring dynamic metabolic responses to six physiological challenges (exercise, 36 h fasting, oral glucose and lipid loads, mixed meal, cold stress) in healthy subjects.

Age-related metabolite profiles and their relation to clinical outcomes in young adults, middle-aged individuals, and older people.

Age is a significant risk factor for common noncommunicable diseases, yet the physiological alterations of aging are poorly understood. We were interested in metabolic patterns between cross-sectional cohorts of different age ranges with particular emphasis on waist circumference. We recruited three cohorts of healthy subjects with different age ranges (adolescents 18-25 years, adults 40-65 years, and older citizens 75-85 years) and stratified these based on waist circumference.

Skin Autofluorescence Mirrors Surrogate Parameters of Vascular Aging: An Enable Study.

Advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) are implicated in vascular aging due to their pro-inflammatory properties. Skin autofluorescence (SAF) is a measure to estimate their deposition. It is an easily quantifiable marker that has been shown to correlate with cardiovascular risk and parameters of metabolic diseases.

Sweetener System Intervention Shifted Neutrophils from Homeostasis to Priming.

Background: Non-nutritive sweeteners (NNS) are part of personalized nutrition strategies supporting healthy glycemic control. In contrast, the consumption of non-nutritive sweeteners has been related to person-specific and microbiome-dependent glycemic impairments. Reports on the effects of NNS on our highly individual cellular immune system are sparse.

Dynamic patterns of postprandial metabolic responses to three dietary challenges.

Food intake triggers extensive changes in the blood metabolome. The kinetics of these changes depend on meal composition and on intrinsic, health-related characteristics of each individual, making the assessment of changes in the postprandial metabolome an opportunity to assess someone's metabolic status. To enable the usage of dietary challenges as diagnostic tools, profound knowledge about changes that occur in the postprandial period in healthy individuals is needed.

Dynamics and determinants of human plasma bile acid profiles during dietary challenges.

In recent years, bile acids (BA) have received great interest due to their pleiotropic biological activity and the presence of plasma membrane-bound and nuclear receptors. Moreover, BA in blood have been identified by metabolite screening approaches as biomarkers that are associated with various diseases and even with a human longevity phenotype. With the growing interest in the microbiota contribution to the health-disease trajectory, BA that undergo deconjugation and other modifications by bacteria in the large intestine have become a prime target as a microbiome diversity modifier.

Namco: a microbiome explorer.

16S rRNA gene profiling is currently the most widely used technique in microbiome research and allows the study of microbial diversity, taxonomic profiling, phylogenetics, functional and network analysis. While a plethora of tools have been developed for the analysis of 16S rRNA gene data, only a few platforms offer a user-friendly interface and none comprehensively covers the whole analysis pipeline from raw data processing down to complex analysis. We introduce Namco, an R shiny application that offers a streamlined interface and serves as a one-stop solution for microbiome analysis.

Evaluation of the metabotype concept after intervention with oral glucose tolerance test and dietary fiber-enriched food: An enable study.

Background And Aims: Evidence suggests that people react differently to the same diet due to inter-individual differences. However, few studies have investigated variation in response to dietary interventions based on individuals' baseline metabolic characteristics. This study aims to examine the differential reaction of metabotype subgroups to an OGTT and a dietary fiber intervention.

Association Between Inflammation and Appetite in Healthy Community-Dwelling Older Adults-An Study.

Aging is associated with reduced appetite as well as a slight increase in pro-inflammatory status, which both might contribute to the development of malnutrition. We aimed to evaluate the association between inflammation based on serum C-reactive protein (CRP), and appetite in healthy community-dwelling older adults. In this cross-sectional study of 158 healthy and non-smoking persons (aged 75-85 years), appetite was assessed in personal interviews by a single question with five answer categories.

Association between Habitual Diet and the Postprandial Glucose Response-An Enable Study.

Scope: It is inconclusive which factors influence inter-individual variations of postprandial glucose response (PPGR). This study investigates whether the habitual diet is associated with PPGR.

Methods And Results: Data from healthy adults (young adults with 18-25 years, middle-aged adults with 40-65 years, and older adults with 75-85 years) is collected at baseline and during an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) collected.