Discovery of human urinary biomarkers of aronia‐citrus juice intake by HPLC‐q‐TOF‐based metabolomic approach

Metabolomics has emerged in the field of food and nutrition sciences as a powerful tool for doing profiling approaches. In this context, HPLC-q-TOF-based metabolomics approach was applied to unveil changes in the urinary metabolome in human subjects (n = 51, 23 men and 28 women) after regular aronia-citrus juice (AC-juice) intake (250 mL/day) during 16 weeks compared to individuals given a placebo beverage. Samples were analyzed by HPLC-q-TOF followed by multivariate data analysis (orthogonal signal filtering-partial least square discriminant analysis) that discriminated relevant mass features related to AC-juice intake. The results showed that biomarkers of AC-juice intake including metabolites coming from metabolism of food components as proline betaine, ferulic acid, and two unknown mercapturate derivatives were identified. Discovery of new biomarkers of food intake will help in the building up of the food metabolome and facilitate future insights into the mechanisms of action of dietary components in population health.