Britta Naus1, Anouk L. Feitsma2, Lydia A. Afman1, Rinke Stienstra1 3
1 Nutrition, Metabolism and Genomics Group, Division of Human Nutrition and Health, Wageningen University, Stippeneng 4, 6708 WE Wageningen, the Netherlands. Email address: britta.naus@wur.nl
2 FrieslandCampina, Stationsplein 4, 3818 LE Amersfoort, the Netherlands.
3 Department of Internal Medicine, RadboudUMC, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
Background
Meal-induced metabolic changes can trigger acute postprandial inflammation. Given frequent meal consumption in the Western diet, people remain in a postprandial state for 18 hours/day. The induced repetitive inflammation may lead to persistent low-grade inflammation, a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes (T2D). Dietary fat is a key macronutrient linked to postprandial inflammation, yet the underlying immunological mediators shaping this inflammatory response and the influence of lipid source on their expression remain poorly understood.
Methods
We conducted a randomized crossover intervention trial in 37 healthy middle-aged adults (BMI 22–27 kg/m²), who consumed two high-fat shakes (95.5 g fat) differing in fatty acid composition (plant- and dairy-derived). Plasma samples were collected at baseline and hourly for 8 hours postprandially. Inflammatory proteins were quantified at baseline and 6 hours using the Olink Inflammation panel (92 proteins).
Results
Relative to baseline, the plant- and dairy-derived fatty acid shakes significantly altered the expression of 13 and 10 inflammatory proteins, respectively (adjusted p < 0.05). Differences in Δ (t = 6 hours − baseline) protein expression levels between the shakes were limited to lower postprandial IL-6 expression (p = 0.006) and higher IL-18 (p = 0.017) and MMP-1 (p = 0.027) comparing intake of the plant-derived shake with intake of the dairy-derived shake.
Discussion/Conclusion
Our study demonstrates that Consumption of high-fat shakes induced marked changes in the postprandial inflammatory proteome, whereas differences between plant- and dairy-derived fatty acids were limited to a small subset of inflammatory proteins. These findings provide insight into the immunological mediators of fat-induced postprandial inflammation and support further investigation of their role in metabolic health.