Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-1-2019
Department
Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science
Keywords
saturated fatty acids, very-long-chain saturated fatty acids, diabetes, meta-analysis, Fatty Acids and Outcomes Research Consortium, Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology
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.
Source Publication Title
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Publisher
American Society of Clinical Nutrition
Volume
109
Issue
4
First Page
1216
DOI
10.1093/ajcn/nqz005
Recommended Citation
Fretts, A. M., Imamura, F., Marklund, M., Micha, R., Wu, J. H., Murphy, R. A., Chien, K., McKnight, B., Tintle, N. L., Forouhi, N. G., Qureshi, W. T., Virtanen, J. K., Wong, K., Wood, A. C., Lankinen, M., Rajaobelina, K., Harris, T. B., Djousse, L., Harris, B., Wareham, N. J., Steffen, L. M., Laakso, M., Veenstra, J., Samieri, C., Brouwer, I. A., Yu, C. I., Koulman, A., Steffen, B. T., Helmer, C., Sotoodehnia, N., Siscovick, D., Gudnason, V., Consortium, I., Wagenknecht, L., Voutilainen, S., Tsai, M. Y., Uusitupa, M., Kalsbeek, A., Berr, C., Mozaffarian, D., & Lemaitre, R. N. (2019). Associations of Circulating Very-Long-Chain Saturated Fatty Acids and Incident Type 2 Diabetes: A Pooled Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 109 (4), 1216. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqz005