by Yulu Zheng, Jae Jeong Yang, Deepak K. Gupta, David M.
Herrington, Bing Yu, Ngoc Quynh H. Nguyen, Rui Pinto, Ioanna Tzoulaki, Hui Cai, Qiuyin Cai, Loren Lipworth, Xiao-Ou Shu, Wei Zheng, Danxia Yu Background Despite growing evidence linking gut microbiota and microbial metabolites to human cardiometabolic health, few studies have systematically examined associations between circulating microbial metabolites and incident coronary heart disease (CHD).
Methods and findings We conducted a multi-stage metabolomics study involving five prospective cohorts. Discovery involved untargeted plasma metabolite profiling of 896 incident cases and 896 age-/sex-/race-matched controls (~300 pairs per race: Black, White, Asian) from the Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS; baseline: 2002–2009) and the Shanghai Women’s Health Study and Shanghai Men’s Health Study (SWHS/SMHS; baseline: 1996–2000 and 2002–2006).
In-silico validation was conducted in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC; N = 3,539; 663 cases; baseline: 1987–1989) and Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA; N = 3,860; 446 cases; baseline: 2000–2002).
PLOS Medicine published a clinical update in Research Highlights on 17 Mar 2026.
The item focuses on Circulating gut microbial metabolites and risk of coronary heart disease: A prospective multi-stage metabolomics study.
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