The Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS): Metabolomics in 47 Prospective Cohort Studies

Bing Yu¹, Krista A Zanetti², Marinella Temprosa³, Demetrius Albanes⁴, Nathan Appel⁵, Clara Barrios Barrera⁶, Yoav Ben-Shlomo⁷, Eric Boerwinkle^{1

8}, Juan P Casas⁹, Clary Clish¹⁰, Caroline Dale⁹, Abbas Dehghan¹¹, Andriy Derkach⁴, A Heather Eliassen^{12

13}, Paul Elliott^{11

14

15}, Eoin Fahy¹⁶, Christian Gieger^{17

18

19}, Marc J Gunter²⁰, Sei Harada^{21

22}, Tamara Harris²³, Deron R Herr^{24

25}, David Herrington²⁶, Joel N Hirschhorn^{10

27

28}, Elise Hoover², Ann W Hsing²⁹, Mattias Johansson³⁰, Rachel S Kelly³¹, Chin Meng Khoo^{32

33

34}, Mika Kivimäki³⁵, Bruce S Kristal^{36

37}, Claudia Langenberg³⁸, Jessica Lasky-Su³⁹, Deborah A Lawlor^{7

40}, Luca A Lotta³⁸, Massimo Mangino⁴¹, Loïc Le Marchand⁴², Ewy Mathé⁴³, Charles E Matthews⁴, Cristina Menni⁴¹, Lorelei A Mucci^{12

13}, Rachel Murphy⁴⁴, Matej Oresic^{45

46}, Eric Orwoll⁴⁷, Jennifer Ose^{48

49}, Alexandre C Pereira⁵⁰, Mary C Playdon^{4

48

51}, Lucilla Poston⁵², Jackie Price⁵³, Qibin Qi⁵⁴, Kathryn Rexrode^{55

56}, Adam Risch⁵, Joshua Sampson⁴, Wei Jie Seow⁵⁷, Howard D Sesso^{13

55}, Svati H Shah^{58

59

60}, Xiao-Ou Shu⁶¹, Gordon C S Smith⁶², Ulla Sovio⁶³, Victoria L Stevens⁶⁴, Rachael Stolzenberg-Solomon⁴, Toru Takebayashi^{21

65}, Therese Tillin⁶⁶, Ruth Travis⁶⁷, Ioanna Tzoulaki¹¹, Cornelia M Ulrich⁴⁸, Ramachandran S Vasan^{68

69

70

71}, Mukesh Verma², Ying Wang⁶⁴, Nick J Wareham³⁸, Andrew Wong⁷², Naji Younes³, Hua Zhao⁷³, Wei Zheng⁶¹, Steven C Moore⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics, and Environmental Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas.
² Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland.
³ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University, Washington, DC.
⁴ Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland.
⁵ Information Management Services, Inc., Rockville, Maryland.
⁶ Department of Nephrology, Hospital del Mar, Institut Mar d´Investigacions Mediques, Barcelona, Spain.
⁷ Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
⁸ Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas.
⁹ Institute of Health Informatics Research, UCL Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
¹⁰ Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
¹¹ Medical Research Council-Public Health England Centre for Environment and Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
¹² Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
¹³ Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston Massachusetts.
¹⁴ National Institute for Health Research, Imperial College Biomedical Research Center, London, United Kingdom.
¹⁵ Health Data Research UK Center at Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
¹⁶ Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California.
¹⁷ Research Unit of Molecular Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany.
¹⁸ Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany.
¹⁹ German Center for Diabetes Research.
²⁰ Section of Nutrition and Metabolism, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.
²¹ Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
²² Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Tsuruoka, Japan.
²³ Laboratory of Epidemiology and Population Science Laboratory.
²⁴ Department of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
²⁵ Department of Biology, San Diego State University, San Diego, California.
²⁶ Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
²⁷ Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
²⁸ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
²⁹ Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford, California.
³⁰ International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.
³¹ Systems Genetics and Genomics Unit, Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
³² Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
³³ Department of Medicine, National University Health System, Singapore.
³⁴ Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, Singapore.
³⁵ Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
³⁶ Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
³⁷ Division of Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
³⁸ MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
³⁹ Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁴⁰ MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
⁴¹ Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
⁴² University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Epidemiology Program, Honolulu, Hawaii.
⁴³ Department of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
⁴⁴ Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁴⁵ Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
⁴⁶ School of Medical Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden.
⁴⁷ Department of Medicine, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon.
⁴⁸ Division of Cancer Population Sciences, Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
⁴⁹ Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
⁵⁰ Instituto de Pesquisas Rene Rachou, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
⁵¹ Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
⁵² Department of Women and Children's Health, School of Life Course Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King's College London, St. Thomas' Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
⁵³ Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom.
⁵⁴ Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York.
⁵⁵ Division of Preventive Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁵⁶ Division of Women's Health, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁵⁷ Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore and National University Health System, Singapore.
⁵⁸ Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina.
⁵⁹ Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina.
⁶⁰ Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, North Carolina.
⁶¹ Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee.
⁶² Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, National Institute for Health Research, Cambridge Comprehensive Biomedical Research Center, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
⁶³ Center for Trophoblast Research, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
⁶⁴ Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Cambridge, National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
⁶⁵ Epidemiology Research Program, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia.
⁶⁶ Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
⁶⁷ Cancer Epidemiology Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
⁶⁸ Section of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁶⁹ Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁷⁰ Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁷¹ Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, Massachusetts.
⁷² MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London, London, United Kingdom.
⁷³ Department of Epidemiology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.

PMID: 31155658
PMCID: PMC6545286
DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwz028

The Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS): Metabolomics in 47 Prospective Cohort Studies

Bing Yu et al. Am J Epidemiol. 2019.

. 2019 Jun 1;188(6):991-1012.

doi: 10.1093/aje/kwz028.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics, and Environmental Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, Texas.
² Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland.
³ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University, Washington, DC.
⁴ Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland.
⁵ Information Management Services, Inc., Rockville, Maryland.
⁶ Department of Nephrology, Hospital del Mar, Institut Mar d´Investigacions Mediques, Barcelona, Spain.
⁷ Population Health Sciences, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
⁸ Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas.
⁹ Institute of Health Informatics Research, UCL Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
¹⁰ Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
¹¹ Medical Research Council-Public Health England Centre for Environment and Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
¹² Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
¹³ Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston Massachusetts.
¹⁴ National Institute for Health Research, Imperial College Biomedical Research Center, London, United Kingdom.
¹⁵ Health Data Research UK Center at Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.
¹⁶ Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California.
¹⁷ Research Unit of Molecular Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany.
¹⁸ Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany.
¹⁹ German Center for Diabetes Research.
²⁰ Section of Nutrition and Metabolism, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.
²¹ Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan.
²² Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, Tsuruoka, Japan.
²³ Laboratory of Epidemiology and Population Science Laboratory.
²⁴ Department of Pharmacology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
²⁵ Department of Biology, San Diego State University, San Diego, California.
²⁶ Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
²⁷ Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
²⁸ Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
²⁹ Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford Cancer Institute, Stanford, California.
³⁰ International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.
³¹ Systems Genetics and Genomics Unit, Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
³² Department of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
³³ Department of Medicine, National University Health System, Singapore.
³⁴ Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, Singapore.
³⁵ Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
³⁶ Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
³⁷ Division of Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
³⁸ MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
³⁹ Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁴⁰ MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
⁴¹ Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
⁴² University of Hawaii Cancer Center, Epidemiology Program, Honolulu, Hawaii.
⁴³ Department of Biomedical Informatics, College of Medicine, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
⁴⁴ Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
⁴⁵ Turku Centre for Biotechnology, University of Turku and Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
⁴⁶ School of Medical Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden.
⁴⁷ Department of Medicine, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon.
⁴⁸ Division of Cancer Population Sciences, Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
⁴⁹ Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
⁵⁰ Instituto de Pesquisas Rene Rachou, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
⁵¹ Department of Nutrition and Integrative Physiology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
⁵² Department of Women and Children's Health, School of Life Course Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, King's College London, St. Thomas' Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
⁵³ Usher Institute of Population Health Sciences and Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom.
⁵⁴ Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York.
⁵⁵ Division of Preventive Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁵⁶ Division of Women's Health, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁵⁷ Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore and National University Health System, Singapore.
⁵⁸ Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina.
⁵⁹ Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina.
⁶⁰ Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, North Carolina.
⁶¹ Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee.
⁶² Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, National Institute for Health Research, Cambridge Comprehensive Biomedical Research Center, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
⁶³ Center for Trophoblast Research, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
⁶⁴ Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Cambridge, National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
⁶⁵ Epidemiology Research Program, American Cancer Society, Atlanta, Georgia.
⁶⁶ Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
⁶⁷ Cancer Epidemiology Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
⁶⁸ Section of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁶⁹ Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁷⁰ Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts.
⁷¹ Framingham Heart Study, Framingham, Massachusetts.
⁷² MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London, London, United Kingdom.
⁷³ Department of Epidemiology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.

PMID: 31155658
PMCID: PMC6545286
DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwz028

Abstract

The Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS) was established in 2014 to facilitate large-scale collaborative research on the human metabolome and its relationship with disease etiology, diagnosis, and prognosis. COMETS comprises 47 cohorts from Asia, Europe, North America, and South America that together include more than 136,000 participants with blood metabolomics data on samples collected from 1985 to 2017. Metabolomics data were provided by 17 different platforms, with the most frequently used labs being Metabolon, Inc. (14 cohorts), the Broad Institute (15 cohorts), and Nightingale Health (11 cohorts). Participants have been followed for a median of 23 years for health outcomes including death, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and others; many of the studies are ongoing. Available exposure-related data include common clinical measurements and behavioral factors, as well as genome-wide genotype data. Two feasibility studies were conducted to evaluate the comparability of metabolomics platforms used by COMETS cohorts. The first study showed that the overlap between any 2 different laboratories ranged from 6 to 121 metabolites at 5 leading laboratories. The second study showed that the median Spearman correlation comparing 111 overlapping metabolites captured by Metabolon and the Broad Institute was 0.79 (interquartile range, 0.56-0.89).

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00920621.

Keywords: cancer; cohort; diabetes; genetics; heart disease; metabolomics; prospective.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 2019.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

**Figure 1.**
Geographical locations of studies participating in the Consortium of Metabolomics Studies, multiple countries, established in 2014 (abbreviations are defined in Table 1).

**Figure 2.**
Spearman correlations between metabolite values measured at the Broad Institute and Metabolon, Inc., for 111 overlapping metabolites, Consortium of Metabolomics Studies, multiple countries, established in 2014. Each bar represents the number of metabolites within the Spearman correlation interval denoted by the x-axis tick marks. The median correlation across the 111 metabolites was 0.79.

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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The Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS): Metabolomics in 47 Prospective Cohort Studies

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The Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS): Metabolomics in 47 Prospective Cohort Studies

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