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Habitual sleep and human plasma metabolomics

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Abstract

Introduction

Sleep plays an important role in cardiometabolic health. The sleep-wake cycle is partially driven by the endogenous circadian clock, which governs a range of metabolic pathways. The association between sleep and cardiometabolic health may be mediated by alterations of the human metabolome.

Objectives

To better understand the biological mechanism underlying the association between sleep and health, we examined human plasma metabolites in relation to sleep duration and sleep timing.

Methods

Using an untargeted approach, 329 fasting plasma metabolites were measured in 277 Chinese participants. We measured sleep timing (midpoint between bedtime and wake up time) using repeated time-use surveys (4 weeks during 1 year) and previous night sleep duration from questionnaires completed before sample donation.

Results

We found 64 metabolites that were associated with sleep timing with a false discovery rate of 0.2 or lower, after adjusting for potential confounders. Notably, we found that later sleep timing was associated with higher levels of multiple metabolites in amino acid metabolism, including branched chain amino acids and their gamma-glutamyl dipeptides. We also found widespread associations between sleep timing and numerous metabolites in lipid metabolism, including bile acids, carnitines and fatty acids. In contrast, previous night sleep duration was not associated with plasma metabolites in our study.

Conclusion

Sleep timing was associated with a large number of metabolites across a variety of biochemical pathways. Some metabolite associations are consistent with a relationship between late chronotype and adverse effects on cardiometabolic health.

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Funding

This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, Department of Health and Human Services.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health and Human Physiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

    Qian Xiao

  2. Biostatistics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD, USA

    Andriy Derkach & Joshua N. Sampson

  3. Nutritional Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD, USA

    Steven C. Moore & Charles E. Matthews

  4. Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN, USA

    Wei Zheng & Xiao-Ou Shu

  5. Genetic Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD, USA

    Fangyi Gu & Neil E. Caporaso

Authors
  1. Qian Xiao
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  2. Andriy Derkach
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  3. Steven C. Moore
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  4. Wei Zheng
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  5. Xiao-Ou Shu
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  6. Fangyi Gu
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  7. Neil E. Caporaso
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  8. Joshua N. Sampson
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  9. Charles E. Matthews
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Correspondence to Qian Xiao.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Xiao, Q., Derkach, A., Moore, S.C. et al. Habitual sleep and human plasma metabolomics. Metabolomics 13, 63 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11306-017-1205-z

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