INTERMAP
The INTERMAP Study is an international co-operative epidemiological investigation on macro- and micronutrients, food and urinary metabolites and other factors influencing blood pressure (BP) levels of individuals. It includes dietary and urinary data on 4,680 men and women aged 40-59 years from 17 population samples in China (n= 839), Japan (n=1145), UK (n=501) and USA (n=2195). Analysis of such diverse human population samples enables unprecedented insights into human biological diversity across individuals and groups, to help define the as yet unknown fundamental classes of human metabolic phenotypes, and allow investigation of specific metabolic excretory patterns that associate with population burdens of disease.
Acquisition of spectral data from 4,680 INTERMAP participants by researchers at Imperial College has created the basis for a unique and comprehensive metabolic atlas of human population phenotypes. The ongoing metabolomic research programme presents the first comprehensive strategic programme for mapping human metabolic variation on a global scale in relation to two major disease risk factors, high BP and obesity. It will involve application of multiple state-of-the-art analytical spectroscopy, bioinformatic, biochemical and epidemiological techniques to the existing large human specimen collections held at Imperial College.
This study represents the largest human metabolic phenotyping effort yet undertaken, and promises the extraction of specific biomarker information related to hypotheses on major disease risk factors that are of global importance.
Key Recent Publications
Loo RL, Coen M, Ebbels T, Cloarec O, Maibaum E, Bictash M, Yap I, Elliott P, Stamler J, Nicholson JK and others. 2009. Metabolic profiling and population screening of analgesic usage in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy-based large-scale epidemiologic studies. Anal Chem 81(13):5119-29.
Holmes E, Loo RL, Stamler J, Bictash M, Yap IK, Chan Q, Ebbels T, De Iorio M, Brown IJ, Veselkov KA and others. 2008. Human metabolic phenotype diversity and its association with diet and blood pressure. Nature 453(7193):396-400.
Dumas ME, Maibaum EC, Teague C, Ueshima H, Zhou B, Lindon JC, Nicholson JK, Stamler J, Elliott P, Chan Q and others. 2006. Assessment of analytical reproducibility of 1H NMR spectroscopy based metabonomics for large-scale epidemiological research: the INTERMAP Study. Anal Chem 78(7):2199-208.
