Several metabolites in the blood whose levels are altered by coffee consumption and might affect the risk of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD), found a study in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
A partial explanation may be that these compounds were also associated with cigarette smoking, write the authors.
Dr Casey Rebholz (Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and her colleagues examined 372 blood metabolites in 3,811 participants in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study, a prospective community-based cohort, and found that 41 metabolites were associated with coffee consumption. When the team analysed these metabolites in an additional 1,043 adults in the Bogalusa Heart Study, a community-based long-term epidemiological study, 20 of the 41 metabolites were also associated with coffee consumption in this group.
Higher levels of three of these coffee-related metabolites were significantly associated with higher risks of developing CKD: glycochenodeoxycholate, O-methylcatechol sulfate, and 3-methyl catechol sulfate.
Glycochenodeoxycholate, a lipid involved in primary bile acid metabolism, may contribute to potentially beneficial effects of coffee consumption on kidney health.
O-methylcatechol sulfate and 3-methyl catechol sulfate, which are involved in metabolism of the preservative benzoate, may represent harmful aspects of coffee on the kidneys.
“A large body of scientific evidence has suggested that consuming a moderate amount of coffee is consistent with a healthy diet. We were able to identify one metabolite that supports this theory,” said Rebholz. “There were two other metabolites associated with coffee that surprisingly were associated with a higher risk of incident chronic kidney disease. These compounds were also associated with cigarette smoking, which may in part explain why these compounds were associated with higher risk of kidney disease.”
With more research on the metabolic underpinnings of the coffee-kidney relationship, these metabolites may point to processes that are relevant for preventing kidney disease through dietary modifications.
An accompanying editorial notes that it would have been interesting to see how the study’s results on metabolites associated with kidney disease after accounting for participants' self-reported consumption of coffee. “Integrating these data types should provide a better understanding of the role coffee and other diet factors play in the development of CKD or other diseases,” the authors wrote.
Study details
Metabolites Associated with Coffee Consumption and Incident Chronic Kidney Disease
William He, Jingsha Chen, Alexander Razavi, Emily Hu, Morgan Grams, Bing Yu, Chirag Parikh, Eric Boerwinkle, Lydia Bazzano, Lu Qi, Tanika Kelly, Josef Coresh, Casey Rebholz. Metabolites Associated with Coffee Consumption and Incident Chronic Kidney Disease.
Published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology in November 2021
Abstract
Background and objectives
Moderate coffee consumption has been associated with lower risk of CKD; however, the exact biologic mechanisms underlying this association are unknown. Metabolomic profiling may identify metabolic pathways that explain the association between coffee and CKD. The goal of this study was to identify serum metabolites associated with coffee consumption and examine the association between these coffee-associated metabolites and incident CKD.
Design, setting, participants, & measurements
Using multivariable linear regression, we identified coffee-associated metabolites among 372 serum metabolites available in two subsamples of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study (ARIC; n=3811). Fixed effects meta-analysis was used to pool the results from the two ARIC study subsamples. Associations between coffee and metabolites were replicated in the Bogalusa Heart Study (n=1043). Metabolites with significant associations with coffee in both cohorts were then evaluated for their prospective associations with incident CKD in the ARIC study using Cox proportional hazards regression.
Results
In the ARIC study, mean (SD) age was 54 (6) years, 56% were daily coffee drinkers, and 32% drank >2 cups per day. In the Bogalusa Heart Study, mean (SD) age was 48 (5) years, 57% were daily coffee drinkers, and 38% drank >2 cups per day. In a meta-analysis of two subsamples of the ARIC study, 41 metabolites were associated with coffee consumption, of which 20 metabolites replicated in the Bogalusa Heart Study. Three of these 20 coffee-associated metabolites were associated with incident CKD in the ARIC study.
Conclusions
We detected 20 unique serum metabolites associated with coffee consumption in both the ARIC study and the Bogalusa Heart Study, and three of these 20 candidate biomarkers of coffee consumption were associated with incident CKD. One metabolite (glycochenodeoxycholate), a lipid involved in primary bile acid metabolism, may contribute to the favourable kidney health outcomes associated with coffee consumption. Two metabolites (O-methylcatechol sulfate and 3-methyl catechol sulfate), both of which are xenobiotics involved in benzoate metabolism, may represent potential harmful aspects of coffee on kidney health.
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