Nutrition & Biomarkers

HotFacets is set to generate insight into the effects of acute alcohol consumption on short-chain fatty acids dynamics, energy metabolism, and biomarkers.

Key research questions

• Study the effects of acute alcohol consumption on resting energy expenditure, thermogenesis, and substrate oxidation.
• Validate biomarkers of alcohol intake.
• Explore the potential low-level alcohol production in the gut.

Scientific context

Despite the negative health consequences of chronic alcohol abuse, moderate alcohol consumption (half to 2 drinks a day) is associated in observational studies with a 20-30% lower risk of CVD and Type-2 Diabetes.

The mechanism(s) of action for its effects on cardiometabolic health and energy homeostasis are poorly understood and possible overshadowed by potential confounding.

Some aspects of alcohol metabolism and biomarker validation could inform a longer, well-designed intervention trial to clarify mechanisms of actions and infer causality between moderate alcohol intake and protective health effects.

Funded by

Semper Anders grant from the Carlsberg Foundation

Period: September 2021 – June 2024.

Contact

Postdoc Catalina Cuparencu

Professor Lars Ove Dragsted

The SHIFT2HEALTH project aims to develop nutritional and behavioural strategies for people with high risk of obesity caused by circadian disruption.

Nightshift work is a well-known risk factor for the development of overweight and obesity, which in turn may lead to an increased risk of cardiometabolic diseases and cancer. Yet, the biological and behavioral mechanisms by which shift work increases the risk of obesity are not well understood.

In the Shift2Health cross-sectional study, we aim to investigate the behavioural, environmental, and biological mechanisms and pathways that are responsible for the association of night shift work and obesity across Europe. We will compare night shift workers from industry and health sector  with people working only day-shifts, in five EU countries.

Focus areas

• Biological pathways related to microbiome, metabolic health and inflammation
• Pre-obesity biomarkers
• Expectations, wishes and needs of shift workers
• Food environments

Involved in the project

Assistant Professor Catalina Cuparencu

Professor Lars Ove Dragsted

This EU project spans seven European countries and has 14 partners

Funded by

HORIZON Europe Framework Programme (2023-2028)

The vision of Shift2Health is to develop evidence-based guidelines, best practices and multi-disciplinary preventive strategies, as well as specific products to support a better health status in the nightshift working population.

Effects of Akkermansia muciniphila and berberine supplementation on insulin sensitivity in night shift workers - a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled, crossover study.

Night shift work is associated with an increased risk of obesity, insulin resistance, and cardiometabolic diseases, possibly due to a combination of circadian misalignment, disrupted sleep, and altered eating patterns. These changes can affect glucose metabolism and may be influenced by the gut microbiota.

The AMBER study investigates the effect of a combined supplementation with a probiotic (Akkermansia muciniphila) and a prebiotic (berberine) over three months each on metabolic health in night shift workers from healthcare and industry in two EU countries. We will measure insulin sensitivity, microbiota composition, intestinal barrier function, inflammation, lipid profile, body composition, sleep, dietary intake, and food preference.

Focus areas

• Diet-microbiome interactions in cardiometabolic health
• Pre-obesity biomarkers

Involved in the project

Assistant Professor Catalina Cuparencu

Professor Lars Ove Dragsted

This EU project spans seven European countries and has 14 partners.

Funded by

HORIZON Europe Framework Programme (2023-2028)

The vision of Shift2Health is to develop evidence-based guidelines, best practices and multi-disciplinary preventive strategies, as well as specific products to support a better health status in the nightshift working population.

Biomarker-driven dietary assessment to improve cardiometabolic research.

In FoodPrints, we will expand the panel of validated BFIs that can be used to estimate dietary intake quantitatively and will showcase the impact of objective vs. self-reported dietary estimates in relation to cardiometabolic risk markers. 

For this, we will conduct a controlled parallel dose-response human intervention trial to evaluate the power of BFI in quantifying intake of a range of foods, we will optimize and validate a LC-MS/MS method targeting up 100 BFIs corresponding to over 30 foods, and we will test the implementation of quantitative BFIs in nutrition epidemiology.

Focus area

• Objective dietary assessment
• LC-MS method development targeting BFIs
• Quantification of food intake through biomarkers

Involved in the project

Assistant Professor Catalina Cuparencu (PI)

Associate Professor Giorgia La Barbera

Professor Morten Arendt Rasmussen (FOOD-KU)

Professor Marian Neuhouser (Fred Hutch Center, Seattle, US)

Funded by

Novo Nordisk Foundation (2026-2029)

Objective Dietary Assessment in People with Type 2 Diabetes

ODA aims to understand how to perform objective assessment of long-term dietary intake in people with T2D.

Key research question

• how to best assess long-term dietary intake using different biological samples in people with T2D.

Scientific context

Biomarkers of food intake enable objective measures of dietary intake and many candidate food intake biomarkers have been identified and subsequently validated in small-scale human intervention studies with controlled food intake. However, validation of the clinical usefulness in large-scale studies (e.g. cohorts) representative of the general population or specific patient groups has yet to be undertaken.

The key exposure of interest in the study of diet and disease relationships is not what wat consume yesterday, but what has been consumed over a longer time-period. But how to best measure this long-term intake using biomarkers of food intake in people with type 2 diabetes? The ODA study will help answer this fundamental question.

Funded by

The Independent Research Fund Denmark and the Danish Diabetes Association.

Period: January 2022 – December 2026.

Contact

Postdoc Daniel Ibsen

Professor Lars Ove Dragsted

Intervention reinforcement and biomarker-driven compliance in the PlanetDiet Randomized Controlled Trial for Cardiometabolic health.

PlanetDiet is a 6-months randomized controlled parallel dietary intervention study testing the effects of sustainable diets on traditional and novel cardiometabolic risk factors, specifically, a metabolic health score, in 180 adults at risk of cardiovascular disease. Link to the PnaletDiet study.

In PlanetDiet+ we will use BFIs to assess the participant compliance with the intervention by measuring key foods in the respective diets, and we will develop a BFI-driven signature of the Planetary Healthy Diet.

Focuse area

• Objective dietary assessment
• Development of dietary patterns signatures in urine samples

Involved in the project

Assistant Professor Catalina Cuparencu (co-applicant)

Professor Inge Tetens (co-applicant)

Associate Professor Marta Guasch Ferre (PI)

Funded by

Hjerteforeningen.

Dietary assessment is a central issue in nutrition science due to the subjective nature of traditional dietary instruments.

Biomarkers of food intake measured in e.g. blood or urine have the potential to increase the objectivity and improve the accuracy of dietary assessment.

Developing biomarkers for as many foods and diets as possible has been a key focus area in our research group for many years.

The implementation of objective biomarkers of food intake in nutrition studies will help to assure compliance in experimental studies and evaluate adherence to longer-term dietary interventions, thereby making nutrition research more precise.

Key focus areas

• Conducting trials and literature surveys to identify the most suitable biomarkers to assess the human diet
• Comparing biomarker measurements with conventional dietary instruments to assess concordance between the two methodologies.
• Working with biomarker approaches for whole diets.
• Setting up an analytical method (liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, LC-MS) to determine the presence of multiple biomarkers in biological samples collected during nutritional trials.

Scientific context

The current dietary assessment instruments such as food frequency questionnaires, dietary records, recalls etc. are flawed by their lack of objectivity. 

This may result in too vague relationships of dietary intakes with health outcomes. Development and implementation of objective tools for dietary assessment is therefore important for the nutrition research area.

This could solve two purposes:

• To test compliance, i.e. whether a volunteer consumed what was planned and agreed according to the study design. This is important for nutritional trials, since identifying non-compliance allows for handling of statistics in a proper way.
• To assess if volunteers in nutrition studies report their food intake accurately. This is an issue in all studies, both observational and experimental. Forgetfulness, lack of knowledge about foods, and biased dietary recordings are probably the most important factors affecting accuracy of subjective assessments.

In the Dietary Biomarkers group, we are working on practical solutions to overcome current challenges and bring biomarkers of food intake into use for compliance testing and for quantitative assessment of food intakes. 

Ideally, each food consumed would leave a traceable set of unique biomarkers of intake. A good biomarker of intake for a food is a substance originating only from the food in question and not from other foods or other exposures.

The biomarker should be quantifiable in a biological sample, e.g. blood, urine, feces, hair etc. A biomarker analysis would then give the straight answer whether the food component was consumed or not and preferably also how much was consumed.

Of course, biomarkers have limitations, e.g. fast excretion, stability issues, or inter-individually variable metabolism, so the time and frequency of intake and of biological sampling are important characteristics to consider.

Key publications

Dragsted LO, Gao Q, Scalbert A, Vergères G, Kolehmainen M, Manach C, Brennan L, Afman LA, Wishart DS, Andres-Lacueva C, Garcia-Aloy M, Verhagen H, Feskens EJM, Praticò G (2018) Validation of food intake biomarkers - critical assessment of candidate biomarkers. Genes Nutr. (online) 13:14; https://doi.org/10.1186/s12263-018-0603-9

Gao Q, Prático G, Scalbert A, Vergéres G, Kolehmainen M, Manach C, Brennan L, Afman LA, Wishart DS, Andres-Lacueva C, Garcia-Aloy M, Verhagen H, Dragsted LO (2017) A scheme for a flexible classification of dietary and health biomarkers. Genes Nutr. 12:34. doi: 10.1186/s12263-017-0587-x

Andersen, M.B.; Rinnan, A.; Manach, C.; Poulsen, S.K.; Pujos-Guillot, E.; Larsen, T.M.; Astrup, A.; Dragsted, L.O. (2014) Untargeted metabolomics as a screening tool for estimating compliance to a dietary pattern. J. Proteome Res. (13:3) 1405-1418 dx.doi.org/10.1021/pr400964s.

Gürdeniz G, Uusitupa M, Hermansen K, Savolainen MJ, Schwab U, Kolehmainen M, Brader L, Cloetens L, Herzig K-H, Hukkanen J, Rosqvist F, Ulven SM, Gunnarsdóttir I, Thorsdottir I, Oresic M, Poutanen KS, Riserus  U, Åkesson B, Dragsted LO (2022) Analysis of the SYSDIET Healthy Nordic Diet randomized trial based on metabolic profiling reveals beneficial effects on glucose metabolism and blood lipids. Clin Nutr. 41 441-451. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2021.12.031

Cuparencu C, Rinnan Å, Silvestre MP, Poppitt SD, Raben A, Dragsted LO (2021) The anserine to carnosine ratio – an excellent discriminator between white and red meats consumed by free-living overweight participants of the PREVIEW study. Eur. J. Nutr. (60, 1) 179-192. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-020-02230-3

Funded by

Dietary Biomarkers represents a long-term scientific goal and has been funded over the years by the Nordic Council of Ministers (070014)  and the Nordea Foundation in support for the SYSDIET and OPUS studies of Nordic diets, respectively, an individual Marie Sklodowska Curie fellowship under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program (655699), by a joint programming initiative “FoodBall”, funded by the Danish Innovation fund (#4203-00002B), by a  Semper Ardens grant from the Carlsberg foundation (CF15-0574), and several minor grants. Current work on microbial food metabolites is funded by the Novo Nordic Foundation grant, PRIMA (NNF19OC0056246).

Contact

Lars Ove Dragsted
Professor