Blood Metabolic Biomarkers of Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 in Aged Adults Determined by a UPLC-MS Metabolomics Approach

Background/Objectives: Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM2) is a metabolic disease whose importance rises with aging. Its effects may damage renal and heart functioning. Plasma biomarkers of DM2 have been shown through metabolomic studies under different conditions, mainly obesity, but untargeted metabolomic studies on DM2 were lacking for elderly people. Methods: A UPLC-MS-based metabolomics approach was conducted to ascertain potential plasma biomarkers in an older than 65 years cohort. Results: the dipeptide Gly-His, along with diverse lysophosphatidylcholines (LPCs), mainly LPC(14:0) and LPC(20:4), as well as three gangliosides, were found to have a different plasma content in DM2 subjects as compared to control (non-diabetic) subjects (NDM2). LPC(20:4) exhibited a gender dependence with statistically significant differences only in females. Gly-His correlated with MEDAS-14, whereas LPC(14:0) did with sugar-rich food consumption. Conclusions: as previously shown for other conditions, mainly obesity, altered lipid metabolism was shown in this study to be a hallmark of DM2 also in elderly people.