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Metabolomics reveals determinants of weight loss during lifestyle intervention in obese children

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Abstract

The amount of weight loss in obese children during lifestyle intervention differs strongly between individuals. The metabolic processes underlying this variability are largely unknown. We hypothesize that metabolomics analyses of serum samples might help to identify metabolic predictors of weight loss. In this study, we investigated 80 obese children aged 6–15 years having completed the one-year lifestyle intervention program ‘Obeldicks’, 40 that achieved a substantial reduction of their body mass index standard deviation score (BMI-SDS) during this intervention (defined as BMI-SDS reduction ≥ 0.5), and 40 that did not improve their overweight status (BMI-SDS reduction < 0.1). Anthropometric and clinical parameters were measured and baseline fasting serum samples of all children were analyzed with a mass spectrometry-based metabolomics approach targeting 163 metabolites. Both univariate regression models and a multivariate least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) approach identified lower serum concentrations of long-chain unsaturated phosphatidylcholines as well as smaller waist circumference as significant predictors of BMI-SDS reduction during intervention (p-values univariate models: 5.3E−03 to 1.0E−04). A permutation test showed that the LASSO model explained a significant part of BMI-SDS change (p = 4.6E−03). Our results suggest a role of phosphatidylcholine metabolism and abdominal obesity in body weight regulation. These findings might lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms behind the large inter-individual variation in response to lifestyle interventions, which is a prerequisite for the development of individualized intervention programs.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the following grants from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF): Grant numbers 01GS0820 and 01GS0823 of the National Genome Research Network (NGFNplus), grant number 01GI0839 of the German Competence Network Obesity (consortium LARGE), grant number 0315494A of the Systems Biology of Metabotypes project (SysMBo), and grant number 03IS206IB of the Gani_Med project to WRM and the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD e.V.). It was further supported by funding from the University of Witten/Herdecke and from the Helmholtz Zentrum München. I.K. and C.F. were supported by the European Union within the ERC grant LatentCauses. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We offer our sincere thanks to the participants of the study as well as their parents. We are grateful to Petra Nicklowitz for conducting the biochemical measurements. We thank Julia Scarpa, Werner Römisch-Margl, Katharina Sckell and Arsin Sabunchi for metabolomics measurements performed at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, Genome Analysis Center, Metabolomics Core Facility, Neuherberg, Germany.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Unit of Molecular Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum München – German Research Center for Environmental Health, Ingolstädter Landstraße 1, 85764, Neuherberg, Germany

    Simone Wahl, Christina Holzapfel, Zhonghao Yu, Michaela Breier, Paula Singmann, Harald Grallert, Thomas Illig & Rui Wang-Sattler

  2. Else Kroener-Fresenius-Center for Nutritional Medicine, University Hospital “Klinikum rechts der Isar”, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany

    Christina Holzapfel

  3. Institute of Computational Biology, Helmholtz Zentrum München – German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany

    Ivan Kondofersky & Christiane Fuchs

  4. Institute of Experimental Genetics, Genome Analysis Center, Helmholtz Zentrum München – German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany

    Cornelia Prehn & Jerzy Adamski

  5. Institute of Experimental Genetics, Life and Food Science Center Weihenstephan, Technische Universität München, Freising-Weihenstephan, Munich, Germany

    Jerzy Adamski

  6. Medical School Hannover, Hannover Unified Biobank, Hanover, Germany

    Thomas Illig

  7. Vestische Kinder- und Jugendklinik Datteln, University of Witten-Herdecke, Datteln, Germany

    Thomas Reinehr

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  1. Simone Wahl
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  2. Christina Holzapfel
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  3. Zhonghao Yu
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  6. Christiane Fuchs
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  11. Thomas Illig
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Correspondence to Thomas Illig.

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Wahl, S., Holzapfel, C., Yu, Z. et al. Metabolomics reveals determinants of weight loss during lifestyle intervention in obese children. Metabolomics 9, 1157–1167 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-013-0550-9

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