(P09-004-25) Analyzing Changes in Amino Acid Blood Metabolites and Developmental Data in Children Aged 24–59 Months Treated for Malnutrition With and Without Rice Bran Supplementation

Objectives: Rice bran (RB) contains unique amino acids and is an affordable, local food ingredient under-utilized for human nutrition. The major objective of this study is to determine the impact of RB in ready-to-use-therapeutic foods (RUTFs) on amino acid metabolism, using dried blood spot (DBS) metabolomics. The differences between relative abundance changes in tryptophan and threonine metabolites during treatment are hypothesized to serve as biomarkers of cognitive development.

Methods: The SEHAT study is a double-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trial in 200 malnourished Indonesian children stratified by age, 6-23 mo (n=78) and 24-59 mo (n=122), for DBS metabolic profiling. Participants consumed control RUTFs (n=95) or RUTFs containing 5% RB (n=105). DBS samples were collected and the Caregiver Reported Early Development Instruments (CREDI) survey administered at week 0, week 8 and week 16. Correlations between CREDI scores, and fold changes in metabolite relative abundances in the tryptophan and threonine pathways will be shown for all three time points using a Pearson correlation.

Results: 82 control and 75 RB participants successfully completed the 8 week treatment and data collection to week 16. Metabolite profiling revealed the RB arm had 45 more statistically significant amino acid metabolite increases over the treatment period than were observed in the control RUTF arm. Tryptophan and kynurenine increased in abundance with RB consumption, although tryptophan betaine significantly increased regardless of RB consumption. Threonine only observed a significant fold change increase of 1.21 between weeks 0 and 8 and decrease of 0.92 between weeks 8 and 16. No statistically significant fold changes of threonine were detected for the control, and linkage to CREDI will help to understand these differential effects during treatment and development.

Conclusions: A suite of tryptophan metabolites and threonine provide new insight into the effectiveness of a novel RB-based RUTF in malnutrition treatment. The 5% RB RUTF’s modulation of specific amino acid metabolite pathways suggests the local ingredient’s potential to support cognitive development and supports integration of biomarkers with CREDI score correlations.

Funding Sources: The study was supported by the Thrasher Research Fund and The National Institute of Health (R21HD113211, Ryan).