Association between amino acids and recent osteoporotic fracture: a matched incident case-control study

Bing Liang; Xinyan Shi; Xinwei Wang; Chao Ma; William D Leslie; Lisa M Lix; Xianbao Shi; Bo Kan; Shuman Yang

doi:10.3389/fnut.2024.1360959

Association between amino acids and recent osteoporotic fracture: a matched incident case-control study

Front Nutr. 2024 Mar 19:11:1360959. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1360959. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Bing Liang^{1

2}, Xinyan Shi³, Xinwei Wang³, Chao Ma³, William D Leslie⁴, Lisa M Lix⁵, Xianbao Shi⁶, Bo Kan⁷, Shuman Yang^#^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Endocrinology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinzhou Medical University, Jinzhou, Liaoning, China.
² Center for Mitochondrial Biology and Medicine, The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiao tong University, Xi'an, China.
³ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China.
⁴ Department of Internal Medicine, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
⁵ Department of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
⁶ Department of Pharmacy, The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinzhou Medical University, Jinzhou, Liaoning, China.
⁷ Department of Clinical Laboratory, The Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Context: Osteoporotic fracture is a major public health issue globally. Human research on the association between amino acids (AAs) and fracture is still lacking.

Objective: To examine the association between AAs and recent osteoporotic fractures.

Methods: This age and sex matched incident case-control study identified 44 recent x-ray confirmed fracture cases in the Second Hospital of Jilin University and 88 community-based healthy controls aged 50+ years. Plasma AAs were measured by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. After adjusting for covariates (i.e., body mass index, milk intake >1 time/week, falls and physical activity), we conducted conditional logistical regression models to test the association between AAs and fracture.

Results: Among cases there were 23 (52.3%) hip fractures and 21 (47.7%) non-hip fractures. Total, essential, and non-essential AAs were significantly lower in cases than in controls. In the multivariable conditional logistic regression models, after adjusting for covariates, each standard deviation increase in the total (odds ratio [OR]: 0.304; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.117-0.794), essential (OR: 0.408; 95% CI: 0.181-0.923) and non-essential AAs (OR: 0.290; 95%CI: 0.107-0.782) was negatively associated with recent fracture. These inverse associations were mainly found for hip fracture, rather than non-hip fractures. Among these AAs, lysine, alanine, arginine, glutamine, histidine and piperamide showed the significantly negative associations with fracture.

Conclusion: There was a negative relationship between AAs and recent osteoporotic fracture; such relationship appeared to be more obvious for hip fracture.

Keywords: amino acids; bone health; fracture; metabolomics; osteoporosis.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was supported in part by Seed Funding from The First Affiliated Hospital of Jinzhou Medical University and the Norman Bethune Program, Jilin University (Grant Number: 2023B11). LL is supported by a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair.