Unprocessed Red Meat, Processed Meat consumption Linked to Ischemic Heart Disease

According to results from a recent cohort research, processed and unprocessed red meat have certain metabolomic signatures that are linked to an elevated risk of ischemic heart disease (IHD).

The research was led by first author Xue Dong, MD, of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics in the School of Public Health at Peking University in Beijing, and colleagues. "The results obtained from observational and genetic analyses indicate that the identified red and processed meat related metabolomic signatures, which mainly consist of lipid metabolites, are associated with an increased risk of IHD," they wrote.

The American Heart Association Journal, April 2023 edition has revealed the findings.

There is conflicting information about the risk of ischemic heart disease (IHD) and meat eating. It is unclear how much of this link may be accounted for by the different metabolic reactions of people to the same food, according to Dong and colleagues' research. In order to determine if certain metabolomic signatures linked with the intake of processed and unprocessed red meat are related to the risk of IHD, we intend to identify these signatures.

In a cohort of 92 246 individuals (mean age, 56.1 years; 55.1% women), researchers used data from the UK Biobank to identify metabolomic signatures that defined metabolic response to processed beef and unprocessed red meat.

A touchscreen dietary questionnaire was used to measure weekly meat intake, and high-throughput nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to measure plasma metabolome.

The use of the Cox proportional hazards regression model was employed to examine the relationship between meat consumption and IHD. "Genome-wide association analysis and 1-sample Mendelian randomization were performed for metabolomic signatures and causal association of signatures with IHD," the scientists reported.

3059 incident IHD occurrences were recorded by the researchers during a median follow-up of 8.74 years.

Researchers created metabolomic fingerprints of 157 and 142 metabolites for unprocessed red meat (Spearman correlation coefficient [r]=0.223) and processed meat (r=0.329), respectively, using elastic net regularized regressions. These metabolomic signatures showed positive associations with incident IHD in a fully adjusted model for processed meat (hazard ratio [HR] per SD increment 1.16, 95% CI 1.11-1.21; P.001) and red meat (hazard ratio [HR] per SD increment 1.11, 95% CI 1.06-1.16; P.001).

For the processed meat metabolomic profile and the red meat metabolomic signature, the genome-wide association analysis found 45 and 4 loci, respectively. Mendelian randomization revealed that individuals who fell into the highest percentile of the anticipated red meat metabolomic signature had a greater risk of IHD than those who fell into the lowest quintile (adjusted HR [aHR] 1.38, 95% CI 1.00-1.90). The risk of IHD was also greater in patients in the top quintile of the processed meat predicted metabolomic profile (aHR 1.64, 95% CI 1.06-2.53) than in the lowest quintile.

Researchers stated that "further study into metabolomic signatures and biological pathways of the constituting metabolites may provide novel understanding on biological mechanisms through which meat consumption impacts heart disease."

Reference-

Dong X, Zhuang Z, Zhao Y, et al. Unprocessed red meat and processed meat consumption, plasma metabolome, and risk of ischemic heart disease: A prospective cohort study of UK Biobank. J Am Heart Assoc. 2023;12:e027934.