Browsing by Author "Karjalainen, Saana"

The purpose of this thesis was to find out how a brain-friendly dietary intervention affects plasma metabolites. The data was from the BraVe (Brainfood interVention) study conducted by Fazer, Nokia, Nightingale and Afekta Technologies. 88 working aged men and women underwent an 8-week diet-switch trial: first 4 weeks consisted of a control diet similar to a typical western diet and the following 4 weeks of an intervention diet which emphasized brain-friendly foods. Lunch was controlled and the subjects received nutritional guidance as well as breakfast cereals and healthy snack options to take home. Dietary intake was measured with food diaries and transformed into FFQ-like data and the subjects were divided into four groups based on their diet compliance. Also weight, blood glucose, insulin, CRP, cholesterol and plasma metabolites were measured during the trial. The metabolite samples were analysed with liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and identified with MS-DIAL. Correlations between metabolites and food groups were determined with SPSS. There were 99 significantly correlating (FDR p<0.1) metabolites: phospholipids, phosphatidylcholines, amino acids and acylcarnitines. 42 metabolites remained unknown. The strongest correlations were found between the intake of red meat and PC(O-16:0/20:4) (=0,494, FDR-p<0,001) and LysoPC(O-16:0) (=0,423, FDR-p<0,001) and between the intake of full grain products and 3,2-dihydroksyfenyylivalericacid (=0,418, FDR-p<0,001). Compliance to brain-friendly diet affected the strength and significance of the metabolite correlations . The results of this thesis are similar to those previously found in metabolomics which suggests that the results are valid and the trial successful. These results provide also additional information in the field of metabolomics which can be useful in further research.