Plasma Lipidomic Subclasses and Risk of Hypertension in Middle-Aged and Elderly Chinese

While disrupted lipid metabolism is a well-established risk factor for hypertension in animal models, the links between various lipidomic signatures and hypertension in human studies remain unclear. We aimed to examine associations between plasma lipidomic profiles and prevalence of hypertension among 2248 community-living Chinese aged 50–70 years. Hypertension was defined according to 2020 International Society of Hypertension global hypertension practice guidelines and 2018 Chinese guidelines. In total, 728 plasma lipidomic species were profiled using high-coverage targeted lipidomics. After multivariate adjustment, including lifestyle, body mass index, blood lipids, and sodium intake, 110 metabolites from nine lipidomic subclasses showed significant associations with hypertension, among which phosphatidylethanolamines (PEs) had the strongest association. Eleven lipidomic signals for hypertension risk were further identified from the nine subclasses, including PE(18:0/18:2) (OR per SD, 1.49; 95% confidence intervals, 1.30–1.69), phosphatidylcholine (PC) (18:0/18:2) (1.27; 1.13–1.43), phosphatidylserine (18:0/18:0) (1.24; 1.09–1.41), lysophosphatidylinositol (18:1) (1.17; 1.06–1.29), triacylglycerol (52:5) (1.38; 1.18–1.61), diacylglycerol (16:0/18:2) (1.42; 1.19–1.69), dihydroceramide (24:0) (1.25; 1.09–1.43), hydroxyl-sphingomyelins (SM[2OH])C34:1 (1.19; 1.07–1.33), lysophosphatidylcholine (20:1) (0.86; 0.78–0.95), SM(OH)C38:1 (0.87; 0.79–0.96), and PC (18:2/20:1) (0.84; 0.75–0.94). Principal component analysis also showed that a factor mainly containing specific PEs was positively associated with hypertension (1.20; 1.09–1.33). Collectively, our study revealed that disturbances in multiple circulating lipidomic subclasses and signatures, especially PEs, were significantly associated with the prevalence of hypertension in middle-aged and elderly Chinese. Future studies are warranted to confirm our findings and determine the mechanisms underlying these associations.