2020_05_14_MED_firma_metabolica_dieta_mediterranea

Researchers from the School of Medicine of the University of Navarra, led by Miguel Ángel Martínez-González, and from Harvard University(Liming Liang and Frank Hu) in partnership with the Rovira i Virgili University (Jordi Salas-Salvadó) and other centers, have identified the "signature ormetabolic fingerprint" of adherence to the Mediterraneanper diem expenses .

The great scientific step forward in nutrition consists in the fact that until now the follow-up of this per diem expenses was identified with questionnaires, but now it has been carried out molecularly, with measurements in blood. The work, published in the journal of the European Society of Cardiology(European Heart Journal), currently the most important in Cardiology, highlights that the molecular signature of the Mediterranean per diem expenses predicted a strong reduction in the future risk of cardiac or cerebral infarction.

The Senior Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine at the University of Navarra and one of the authors, Miguel Ruiz-Canela, who has been Visiting Professor at Harvard, states that the combination of 67 molecules, among many hundreds measured in plasma, identified those who best followed the per diem expenses Mediterranean. "This was found in the Spanish essay PREDIMED and was replicated externally in some 7000 participants independent of the US Nurses and Health Professionals programs of study . The best thing was that on both sides of the Atlantic the objective metabolic signature of the Mediterranean per diem expenses demonstrated long-term deadline protection against major cardiovascular disease," he explains.

This protection was maintained independently of other risk factors and outperformed that observed with subjective self-reported nutritional data by participants. Artificial intelligence algorithms were used at research to identify these 67 molecules, thanks to work by Liming Liang and Jun Li of the TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University. These small molecules are metabolites that represent markers of typical Mediterranean food intake and, at the same time, of the effects exerted by this Mediterranean per diem expenses on the body.

Finding the ideal per diem expenses for the prevention of cardiovascular disease

"This metabolic fingerprint is a further indicator goal of compliance with the per diem expenses and clears new avenues for advanced epidemiological programs of study in Nutrition and Public Health in many other areas, such as atrial fibrillation or breast cancer" says Estefania ToledoProfessor at the University of Navarra, co-author of work and member of the board of directors of the CIBER on Obesity and Nutrition.

The findings also open great doors to glimpse possible metabolic pathways that explain the observed benefits of the Mediterranean per diem expenses on health and disease in a multitude of previous programs of study that have not been able to count on an intervention essay like PREDIMED nor on a metabolic analysis like the current one. In addition, the metabolic fingerprint identified could be corroborated as a mediator of the effect by genetic programs of study .

The knowledge acquired may be useful in the future to better individualize the ideal per diem expenses for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. "This study is one of the most important milestones among the multiple collaborations on metabolic, cardiovascular disease and diabetes that CIBEROBN researchers, from different Spanish Universities and research Centers, are now developing at partnership with researchers from Harvard and MIT. This is a longer collaborative history, in which I have been involved for the last 22 years", concludes Miguel A. Martínez-González.

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