Markers of arterial stiffness and urinary metabolomics in young adults with early cardiovascular risk: the African-PREDICT study

INTRODUCTION: Increased exposure to risk factors in the young and healthy contributes to arterial changes, which may be accompanied by an altered metabolism. OBJECTIVES: To increase our understanding of early metabolic alterations and how they associate with markers of arterial stiffness, we profiled urinary metabolites in young adults with cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor(s) and in a control group without CVD risk factors. METHODS: We included healthy black and white women and men (N = 1202), aged 20–30 years with a detailed CVD risk factor profile, reflecting obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, excessive alcohol intake, masked hypertension, hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia and low socio-economic status, forming the CVD risk group (N = 1036) and the control group (N = 166). Markers of arterial stiffness, central systolic blood pressure (BP) and pulse wave velocity were measured. A targeted metabolomics approach was followed by measuring amino acids and acylcarnitines using a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method. RESULTS: In the CVD risk group, central systolic BP (adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity) was negatively associated with histidine, arginine, asparagine, serine, glutamine, dimethylglycine, threonine, GABA, proline, methionine, pyroglutamic acid, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) and butyrylcarnitine (all P ≤ 0.048). In the same group, pulse wave velocity (adjusted for age, sex, ethnicity, mean arterial pressure) was negatively associated with histidine, lysine, threonine, 2-aminoadipic acid, BCAAs and aromatic amino acids (AAAs) (all P ≤ 0.044). In the control group, central systolic BP was negatively associated with pyroglutamic acid, glutamic acid and dodecanoylcarnitine (all P ≤ 0.033). CONCLUSION: In a group with increased CVD risk, markers of arterial stiffness were negatively associated with metabolites related to AAA and BCAA as well as energy metabolism and oxidative stress. Our findings may suggest that metabolic adaptations may be at play in response to increased CVD risk to maintain cardiovascular integrity. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11306-023-01987-y.