The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes the importance of a healthy diet to prevent chronic diseases and recommends replacing saturated animal fats, such as those found in butter, with vegetable unsaturated fats, such as those found in olive and rapeseed oil, to reduce cardiometabolic risk. However, due to limitations in existing studies, these guidelines have been the subject of some controversy to date, as large-scale intervention studies on nutrition and disease risks in particular, which have the strongest evidence, are difficult to conduct.
Fabian Eichelmann and his colleagues from the German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE), together with researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and several other universities, have now succeeded in using lipidomics* to combine the advantages of small-scale nutritional intervention studies with those of prospective cohort studies.
“We analyzed blood samples from a four-month intervention study using lipidomics to identify specific lipid molecules that reflected the different diets of the participants. We then summarized the effects on 45 different fat metabolites in a multi-lipid score (MLS). A high MLS stands for a high consumption of unsaturated vegetable fats and little saturated animal fats,” reported the 38-year-old scientist from the DIfE and German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) in his presentation at the award ceremony in Kassel.
Dr. Fabian Eichelmann (m.) wirh DGE president Prof. Dr. Bernhard Watzl (l.) und vice president Prof. Dr. Ute Nöthlings (r.). © Christian Augustin
The research team then statistically associated the MLS results from the nutritional intervention study with the incidence of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes in large, previously conducted observational studies such as the EPIC Potsdam Study. The joint data analysis of both study types showed that participants with a higher MLS had a significantly reduced risk of developing either disease.
In addition, the international research team investigated whether people with low MLS values specifically benefit from a healthier diet. The Mediterranean diet, which is particularly rich in unsaturated vegetable fats, was compared with a fat-reduced diet in the large PREDIMED nutritional intervention study. The researchers found that the prevention of type 2 diabetes was actually most pronounced in people who had low MLS values at the start of the study.
This innovative approach, which the team of authors led by Fabian Eichelmann present in their research paper “Lipidome changes due to improved dietary fat quality inform cardiometabolic risk reduction and precision nutrition” that was published in Nature Medicine, also convinced the panel of experts for the Hans Adolf Krebs Award headed by DGE President Prof. Dr. Bernhard Watzl.
“I am very proud of the award for our work and grateful that this great cooperation project with colleagues in the UK, Sweden, Spain and the USA has produced such fruitful results,” said Fabian Eichelmann after receiving the science award from DGE Vice President Prof. Dr. Ute Nöthlings.
The findings confirm the health benefits of reducing saturated fats in favor of unsaturated fats and help to formulate targeted dietary recommendations, particularly for those who would benefit most from changing their eating habits.
About the person
Dr. Fabian Eichelmann was born in Troisdorf/North Rhine-Westphalia in 1986. After completing his Master’s degree in Nutritional Sciences at Martin Luther University Halle/Wittenberg, he joined the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke (DIfE) in 2015. In 2018, he completed his doctorate in the Senior Scientist Group Nutrition, Immunity and Metabolism on the topic of “Novel adipokines as inflammatory mediators of aging and risk of chronic disease: phenotypic characterization and etiological insights.” Parallel to his dissertation at the DIfE, Eichelmann completed a master’s degree in epidemiology at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
He has been working as a research assistant in the Department of Molecular Epidemiology since the beginning of 2019. His research focuses on biomarkers, in particular lipidomics, genetics and epigenetics, and on understanding the connection between nutrition and cardiometabolic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. By integrating these disciplines, he aims at gaining deeper insights into the molecular mechanisms that have an effect on these diseases.
Hans Adolf Krebs Award
The Hans Adolf Krebs Award, endowed with 5,000 euros, is granted every four years at the Scientific Congress of the German Nutrition Society (DGE). It honors scientific work in basic research in nutrition and food science that has a particular nutritional focus, demonstrates an original approach and methodological procedure and offers innovative solutions. The prize is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft, BMEL).
*Lipidomics
Lipidomics is a branch of metabolomics. It is used for the complete characterization of all lipids and their metabolic products within an organism. For modern lipidomics analyses, chromatographic and spectroscopic methods are combined in order to be able to distinguish even very similar lipids from one another.