Hair Ionomic Profiles and Associations with Obesity Indicators from a Cypriot Young Adult Mate Cohort

摘要

Obesity is recognized as an important metabolic risk factor for a plethora of chronic diseases, including diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases. Obese people are likely at a higher risk of developing deficiency for elemental nutrients such as magnesium, and/or having excess of certain toxic trace elements such as copper. Hair is a unique biological matrix that provides retrospective snapshot of environmental/dietary exposures. We hypothesized that perturbation in hair ion profiles serve as pre-stage indicators of obesity onset. This study aimed at exploring associations of trace elements and essential macronutrients profiles in hair with clinical and dietary measurements of obese people compared to healthy controls. Archived hair samples from the Cyprus Metabolism Prospective Cohort Study on young adult male sub-population was randomly selected for (ⅰ) normal weight (n=50), (ⅱ) overweight (n=50), and (ⅲ) obese (n=50) participants with BMI of ＜25, 25-30, and ＞30 kg m-2, respectively. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was used for high throughput profiling of 20 trace, toxic, and essential elements: antimony, arsenic, barium, calcium, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, nickel, potassium, selenium, sodium, vanadium, and zinc. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses will be performed to evaluate associations between hair ionomic profiles and obesity indicators such as (ⅰ) adiposity measures (e.g. body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio), (ⅱ) metabolic risk indicators (e.g. cholesterol, metabolic syndrome), (ⅲ) biochemical markers (e.g. leptin-binding protein, triglycerides), and ⅳ) questionnaire-based self-reported dietary habits. Information on how obese and normal individuals differ in terms of hair elemental composition may help to understand their role as a cause or effect of obesity. Further insight on links between obesogen elemental mixtures and endocrine disruptors (such as zinc, cadmium, mercury) may be possible.