Plasma Lipidomics of Healthy Japanese Adults Reveals Gender- and Age-Related Differences

Lipid metabolites in the blood are expected to be biomarker candidates to reflect disease states and responses to therapeutic drugs. However, their profiles are influenced by subject background, which may lead to confounding results. This study aimed to evaluate whether age and gender affect lipid metabolite levels in the plasma of healthy Japanese adults. Comprehensive lipidomic analysis was performed using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for overnight fasted volunteers consisting of 4 groups of 15 subjects each: young males (25-35 years), elderly males (55-64 years), young females (25-35 years), and elderly females (55-65 years). Of 326 detected lipids, none showed significant gender-associated differences in the young groups and 3 metabolites showed significant gender-associated differences in the elderly groups, suggesting that age has little impact on plasma lipid levels in Japanese subjects. We found age-associated differences in 111 (34%) and 115 (35%) metabolites in males and females, respectively, indicating that the subjects’ age should be considered an important confounding factor for lipid biomarker exploration and validation studies in Japanese populations. These findings provide fundamental information on biomarker discovery, validation, and qualification processes in Japanese populations, and facilitate the evaluation of biomarker candidates found in other populations.