Source: Thailand Medical News Dec 20, 2019 5 years, 5 days, 7 hours, 37 minutes ago
An objective way of measuring
flavanol intake has been developed, which could help nutritional experts assess the link between these compounds and their
health benefits at scale.
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Researchers from the University of Reading, the University of California Davis and Mars, Incorporated have, In the first study of its kind published in
Nature Scientific Reports, identified and validated the first
biomarkers for
flavanol and
procyanidin intake at scale.
This new research, recently presented at the International Conference on Polyphenols and Health 2019, validates the use of specific
biomarkers to objectively and accurately estimate the intake of
flavanols and
procyanidins. These studies have been published amid a growing consensus that many nutritional epidemiological studies have considerable limitations due to their dependence on subjective self-reporting, uncertainty around food content data and the impact of food preparation on nutrient content.
In order to address these limitations, there is an urgent need for new methods that objectively measure the intake of specific nutrients in large populations. Using these newly developed
biomarkers, researchers can now investigate the links between dietary intake of
flavanols and
procyanidins and associated
health benefits at scale, without constraints inherent to past research approaches.
Lead Investigator at the University of Reading, Professor Gunter Kuhnle, told
Thailand Medical News, "If we can't objectively measure what people eat, we can't give evidence-based recommendations. We now know that previous approaches to measure dietary
flavanols intake are simply not accurate. This new methodology has the potential to improve the study of how diet impacts human
health by providing researchers with an accurate method for assessing the intake of bioactives and creating a way forward for more robust nutritional epidemiology standards."
Procyanidins and
flavanols are bioactive compounds naturally present in various foods including apples, blueberries, grapes, pears and cocoa. These compounds are being widely investigated for their
health benefits. Researchers have now established the first method to assess actual bioactive intake, without relying on a surrogate. This will enable more accurate studies into links between dietary intake of
flavanols and
procyanidins and
health benefits. Beyond investigating these compounds, this research has wide-reaching consequences for the field of nutritional epidemiologic studies more broadly.
Main findings:
-With this
new method researchers can, for the first time, accurately assess dietary
flavanol and
procyanidin intake in humans
-Researchers can now measure how much
epicatechin the flavanol monomer responsible for improvements in vascular function, a person has consumed, enabling further investigation into associations between intake and disease risk
-This research has also demonstrated that new
biomarkers can be developed to improve the reliability and rigor of nutritional epidemiological research
-With reliable
biomarkers, researchers can now investigate the links between
flavanol and
procyanidins intake and
health benefits in large-scale studies, free from limitations inherent to past research approaches
Reference
: Javier I. Ottaviani et al. Evaluation at scale of microbiome-derived metabolites as biomarker of flavan-3-ol intake in epidemiological studies,
Scientific Reports (2018).
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-28333-w
