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Comparative Study
. 2021 Feb 26;13(3):742.
doi: 10.3390/nu13030742.

Free Fatty Acids Signature in Human Intestinal Disorders: Significant Association between Butyric Acid and Celiac Disease

Simone Baldi  1 , Marta Menicatti  2 , Giulia Nannini  1 , Elena Niccolai  1 , Edda Russo  1 , Federica Ricci  3 , Marco Pallecchi  2 , Francesca Romano  4 , Matteo Pedone  5 , Giovanni Poli  5 , Daniela Renzi  3 , Antonio Taddei  1 , Antonino S Calabrò  3 , Francesco C Stingo  5 , Gianluca Bartolucci  2 , Amedeo Amedei  1   6
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Free Fatty Acids Signature in Human Intestinal Disorders: Significant Association between Butyric Acid and Celiac Disease

Simone Baldi et al. Nutrients. .

Abstract

Altered circulating levels of free fatty acids (FFAs), namely short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), medium chain fatty acids (MCFAs), and long chain fatty acids (LCFAs), are associated with metabolic, gastrointestinal, and malignant diseases. Hence, we compared the serum FFA profile of patients with celiac disease (CD), adenomatous polyposis (AP), and colorectal cancer (CRC) to healthy controls (HC). We enrolled 44 patients (19 CRC, 9 AP, 16 CD) and 16 HC. We performed a quantitative FFA evaluation with the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method (GC-MS), and we performed Dirichlet-multinomial regression in order to highlight disease-specific FFA signature. HC showed a different composition of FFAs than CRC, AP, and CD patients. Furthermore, the partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) confirmed perfect overlap between the CRC and AP patients and separation of HC from the diseased groups. The Dirichlet-multinomial regression identified only strong positive association between CD and butyric acid. Moreover, CD patients showed significant interactions with age, BMI, and gender. In addition, among patients with the same age and BMI, being male compared to being female implies a decrease of the CD effect on the (log) prevalence of butyric acid in FFA composition. Our data support GC-MS as a suitable method for the concurrent analysis of circulating SCFAs, MCFAs, and LCFAs in different gastrointestinal diseases. Furthermore, and notably, we suggest for the first time that butyric acid could represent a potential biomarker for CD screening.

Keywords: GC–MS method; butyric acid; celiac disease; colorectal cancer; free fatty acids.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Bar plot of relative abundances of each serum FFA of CRC, AP, CD patients and healthy controls. FFA = free fatty acid; HC = healthy controls; CD = celiac disease; AP = adenomatous polyposis; CRC = colorectal cancer.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Boxplots representing each FFA percentage in CD, CRC, AP patients and HC.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS − DA) score plot.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Prevalence of butyric acid for female without CD (A) and with CD (B).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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