Identification of New Biomarkers of Banana and Tomato Intake

The intake of fruits and vegetables has been associated to a lower risk of developing metabolic diseases and cancer. The intake of tomato has been proposed to decrease the risk of prostate cancer while the high content of pro-vitamine A carotenes in banana have shown to alleviate Vitamin A deficiency in different countries. Interestingly in spite of their popularity, there are no biomarkers of banana intake reported in the literature while lycopene is the most frequently used metabolite to indicate tomato consumption however, its limited specificity and between-subjects variation sets doubt of its accuracy. Therefore, the identification of novel biomarkers for both banana and tomato is of great value. Untargeted metabolomics, allows a holistic analysis of the food metabolome allowing a deeper inquiry in the metabolism of different compounds and the recognition of patterns and individual differences that may lead to new hypothesis and further research. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to identify biomarkers of acute intake of banana and tomato using an untargeted approach on urine serum of 12 volunteers that participated in a crossover, randomized, controlled study. Volunteers consumed three different test foods: 1) 240g of banana, 2) 300g of tomato and 3) Fresubin 2kcal as control. Serum and urine samples were collected in kinetics over 24h and processed to be analyzed using LC-QTof analysis. The metabolomics profiles are compared using univariate (ANOVA) and multivariate statistical methods (PCA, PLSDA). The identification of discriminant compounds was performed by tandem mass fragmentation with a high-resolution LTQ-Orbitrab Mass spectrometer and by an extensive inquiry of different online databases.