Developed by analysis groups on the Medical College of Graz, Austria and the Institute for Programs Biology in Seattle, Metagenomic Estimation of Dietary Consumption, or MEDI, seems to be on the DNA in stool samples to estimate what meals an individual has consumed and in what amount, with excessive ranges of accuracy.
Sean Gibbons, affiliate professor on the Institute for Programs Biology and co-author of the analysis, says MEDI will permit researchers to trace the diets of contributors in any research that has collected fecal metagenomic information.
“This could increase the inclusion of weight loss program as a variable in lots of research, and it’ll permit individuals to return to prior research with out there stool metagenomes so as to add a further dietary information layer,” he informed NutraIngredients.
The issue with conventional dietary assessments
Correct monitoring of dietary and nutrient consumption is crucial to understanding phenotypic heterogeneity in analysis i.e., the variation in noticed traits inside a research inhabitants who share the identical illness or situation.
Nonetheless, researchers assessing dietary consumption typically depend on meals diaries or questionnaires. These strategies depend upon the person to exactly recall their very own meals consumption and will subsequently be inaccurate.
Survey-free strategies reminiscent of analyzing human plasma or serum are sometimes utilized in scientific settings, nevertheless, these strategies have a ‘restricted breadth of diet-relevant options’, in keeping with the researchers.
“Subsequently, there’s a demand for approaches that may quantify dietary and nutrient consumption patterns with out the necessity for meals frequency questionnaires or recall surveys,” they wrote in Nature Metabolism.
Creating and testing MEDI
MEDI makes use of metagenomic shotgun sequencing (MGS)—a typical information sort in human intestine microbiome analysis that analyzes the DNA of all organisms in a pattern.
Since MGS has not been used to detect food-derived DNA till now, the scientists started by acquiring genomic assemblies for as many single-organism meals as attainable.
Utilizing on-line databases, they catalogued 429 genomes and genomic assemblies, representing 561 meals objects and their related strains. This meals genome database exceeded generally used databases by not less than five-fold, main the researchers to develop an environment friendly mapping technique: MEDI.
MEDI’s efficiency was then assessed utilizing simulated information, controlled-feeding research with outlined dietary interventions and observational information from infants and adults.
“MEDI predictions have been validated in managed feeding research,” Professor Gibbons defined. “For instance, we have been capable of distinguish between individuals who added an additional avocado to their meal and those that didn’t. We additionally noticed that MEDI-inferred nutrient consumption like whole protein, whole vitality and whole carbohydrates was considerably related to questionnaire-based consumption.”
“Lastly, we confirmed how MEDI might be used to tell apart dietary variations between sufferers with metabolic syndrome and wholesome controls. Particularly, MEDI indicated that wholesome people tended to eat extra fruits and greens and people with metabolic syndrome tended to eat extra pork and rooster,” he added.
Implications for future analysis
The authors of the analysis say this newly found methodology may have far-reaching implications, from figuring out dietary patterns linked to persistent situations to predicting customized brief chain fatty acid manufacturing profiles within the intestine.
“Paired microbiome-diet info might be leveraged to construct microbial community-scale metabolic fashions, that are rising instruments that allow the design of customized dietary interventions that optimize particular practical outputs from the microbiota, like butyrate manufacturing,” Professor Gibbons stated.
Nonetheless, the mannequin does have its limitations. For instance, it’s prone to be biased in the direction of entire meals and subsequently could not seize extremely processed meals as precisely. Additionally it is unable to account for various meals preparations or the addition of substances reminiscent of added sugars or cooking oils.
Nonetheless, the authors say MEDI can be a precious software for nutritionists, epidemiologists, anthropologists, clinicians and microbiome researchers when utilized to the ‘treasure trove’ of present human stool information.
“By leveraging a typical information sort that’s recurrently collected to research the composition of the human intestine microbiota, MEDI offers a worth addition to any previous, current or future metagenomic research for which tough estimates of dietary consumption would show helpful,” they concluded.
Supply: Nature Metabolism. doi: 10.1038/s42255-025-01220-1. “Metagenomic estimation of dietary consumption from human stool.” Authors: C. Diener, et al.
