Description

A poster presented at the 2012 Global Pulse Researchers Meeting, Kigali, Rwanda- “Transforming Grain-Legume Systems to Enhance Nutrition and Livelihoods”. Abstract: Metabolomics is a novel research tool for assessing local and systemic metabolic changes in response to diet. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the changes in canine and human fecal and plasma metabolite profiles in response to daily consumption of navy bean compared to a control diet. Twenty-one male and female adult dogs were enrolled in a 4-week dietary intervention study at CSU to investigate effects of 25% navy bean intake. Clinical serum biochemistry and metabolic analyses were performed at baseline and 4 weeks. Diet, fecal, and plasma samples were extracted using an aqueous-methanol solvent and metabolites were detected by GC-MS. Metabolites were identified by screening mass spectra in the NIST and GOLM databases. Dogs that consumed the navy bean diet showed a 22.7% reduction in serum cholesterol compared to controls (P < 0.01). In the navy bean diet, 262 molecular features were found to be at least 1.5 times higher than the control diet (P < 0.05). Pipercolic acid was identified as a unique metabolite in the navy bean diet. Fecal metabolite profiles revealed a subset of dogs with altered glucose, galactose, and ribose metabolism. Fecal metabolome changes from a pilot human dietary navy bean intervention trial will also be presented. Plasma cholesterol and fecal excretion of carbohydrates by the navy bean diet in dogs and humans may implicate a role for navy bean intake to alter lipid metabolism and sugar utilization for chronic disease prevention.