Indoleacetylglutamine Pathway Is a Potential Biomarker for Cardiovascular Diseases

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) remain a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality. Metabolomics allows for the identification of important biomarkers for CVDs, essential for early detection and risk assessment. This cross-sectional study aimed to identify novel metabolic biomarkers associated with CVDs using non-targeted metabolomics. We compared the metabolic profiles of 112 patients with confirmed CVDs diagnosis and 112 gender- and age-matched healthy controls from the Qatar Biobank database. Orthogonal partial least square discriminate analysis and linear models were used to analyze differences in the level of metabolites between the two groups. We report here a significant association between the indoleacetylglutamine pathway and cardiovascular diseases, expanding the repertoire of gut microbiota metabolites linked to CVDs. Our findings suggest that alterations in gut microbiota metabolism, potentially resulting in increased production of indoleacetate, indoleacetylglutamine, and related compounds at the expense of the cardioprotective indolepropionate, may contribute to this association. Our findings may pave the way for novel approaches in CVD risk assessment and potential therapeutic interventions targeting the gut-heart axis.