Associations of circulating very-long-chain saturated fatty acids and incident type 2 diabetes: a pooled analysis of prospective cohort studies.

Amanda M Fretts, Fumiaki Imamura, Matti Marklund, Renata Micha, Jason H Y Wu, Rachel A Murphy, Kuo-Liong Chien, Barbara McKnight, Nathan Tintle, Nita G Forouhi, Waqas T Qureshi, Jyrki K Virtanen, Kerry Wong, Alexis C Wood, Maria Lankinen, Kalina Rajaobelina, Tamara B Harris, Luc Djoussé, Bill Harris, Nick J Wareham, Lyn M Steffen, Markku Laakso, Jenna Veenstra, Cécilia Samieri, Ingeborg A Brouwer, Chaoyu Ian Yu, Albert Koulman, Brian T Steffen, Catherine Helmer, Nona Sotoodehnia, David Siscovick, Vilmundur Gudnason, Lynne Wagenknecht, Sari Voutilainen, Michael Y Tsai, Matti Uusitupa, Anya Kalsbeek, Claudine Berr, Dariush Mozaffarian, Rozenn N Lemaitre

Journal: The American journal of clinical nutrition 2020;109(4):1216-1223

PMID: 30982858

Free Full Text on Elsevier Science View on PubMed

Abstract

BACKGROUND

Saturated fatty acids (SFAs) of different chain lengths have unique metabolic and biological effects, and a small number of recent studies suggest that higher circulating concentrations of the very-long-chain SFAs (VLSFAs) arachidic acid (20:0), behenic acid (22:0), and lignoceric acid (24:0) are associated with a lower risk of diabetes. Confirmation of these findings in a large and diverse population is needed.

OBJECTIVE

We investigated the associations of circulating VLSFAs 20:0, 22:0, and 24:0 with incident type 2 diabetes in prospective studies.

METHODS

Twelve studies that are part of the Fatty Acids and Outcomes Research Consortium participated in the analysis. Using Cox or logistic regression within studies and an inverse-variance-weighted meta-analysis across studies, we examined the associations of VLSFAs 20:0, 22:0, and 24:0 with incident diabetes among 51,431 participants.

RESULTS

There were 14,276 cases of incident diabetes across participating studies. Higher circulating concentrations of 20:0, 22:0, and 24:0 were each associated with a lower risk of incident diabetes. Pooling across cohorts, the RR (95% CI) for incident diabetes comparing the 90th percentile to the 10th percentile was 0.78 (0.70, 0.87) for 20:0, 0.84 (0.77, 0.91) for 22:0, and 0.75 (0.69, 0.83) for 24:0 after adjustment for demographic, lifestyle, adiposity, and other health factors. Results were fully attenuated in exploratory models that adjusted for circulating 16:0 and triglycerides.

CONCLUSIONS

Results from this pooled analysis indicate that higher concentrations of circulating VLSFAs 20:0, 22:0, and 24:0 are each associated with a lower risk of diabetes.

Address: Department of Epidemiology.; Cardiovascular Health Research Unit.; MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.; Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism, Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.; Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA.; The George Institute for Global Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.; School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.; Institute of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.; Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.; Cardiovascular Health Research Unit.; Department of Biostatistics.; Department of Statistics.; Division of Cardiovascular Medicine.; Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition.; Cancer Epidemiology and Intelligence Division, Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.; USDA / Agricultural Research Service Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX.; University of Bordeaux, Inserm, Bordeaux Population Health Research Center, Bordeaux, France.; National Institute on Aging, NIH, Bethesda, MD.; Divisions of Aging, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.; OmegaQuant Analytics, Sioux Falls, SD.; Department of Internal Medicine, Sanford School of Medicine, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD.; Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health.; Institute of Clinical Medicine, Internal Medicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland.; Department of Biology, Dordt College, Sioux Center, IA.; Department of Health Sciences, Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.; Department of Biostatistics.; MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.; National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres Core Nutritional Biomarker Laboratory.; National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres Core Metabolomics and Lipidomics Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, United Kingdom.; Medical Research Council Elsie Widdowson Laboratory, Cambridge, United Kingdom.; Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.; Cardiovascular Health Research Unit.; Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.; New York Academy of Medicine, New York, NY.; Icelandic Heart Association, Kópavogur, Iceland.; Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland, Reyjavik, Iceland.; Division of Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC.; Inserm, University of Montpellier, Neuropsychiatry: Epidemiological and Clinical Research, Montpellier, France.; Memory Research and Resources Center, Department of Neurology, Montpellier University Hospital, Montpellier, France.

DOI: 10.1093/ajcn/nqz005

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MeSH Terms: Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Eicosanoic Acids, Fatty Acids, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Prospective Studies