1. Immunology and Inflammation

Differences in the inflammatory proteome of East African and Western European adults and associations with environmental and dietary factors

  1. Godfrey S Temba
  2. Nadira Vadaq
  3. Vesla Kullaya
  4. Tal Pecht
  5. Paolo Lionetti
  6. Duccio Cavalieri
  7. Joachim L Schultze
  8. Reginald Kavishe
  9. Leo AB Joosten
  10. Andre J van der Ven
  11. Blandina T Mmbaga
  12. Mihai G Netea
  13. Quirijn de Mast  Is a corresponding author
  1. Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Netherlands
  2. Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, United Republic of Tanzania
  3. University of Bonn, Germany
  4. University of Florence, Italy
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.82297
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Cite this article
  1. Godfrey S Temba
  2. Nadira Vadaq
  3. Vesla Kullaya
  4. Tal Pecht
  5. Paolo Lionetti
  6. Duccio Cavalieri
  7. Joachim L Schultze
  8. Reginald Kavishe
  9. Leo AB Joosten
  10. Andre J van der Ven
  11. Blandina T Mmbaga
  12. Mihai G Netea
  13. Quirijn de Mast
(2023)
Differences in the inflammatory proteome of East African and Western European adults and associations with environmental and dietary factors
eLife 12:e82297.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.82297
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  3. Download .RIS

Abstract

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are rising rapidly in urbanizing populations in sub-Saharan Africa. Assessment of inflammatory and metabolic characteristics of a urbanizing African population and the comparison with populations outside Africa could provide insight in the pathophysiology of the rapidly increasing epidemic of NCDs, including the role of environmental and dietary changes. Using a proteomic plasma profiling approach comprising 92 inflammation-related molecules, we examined differences in the inflammatory proteome in healthy Tanzanian and healthy Dutch adults. We show that healthy Tanzanians display a pro-inflammatory phenotype compared to Dutch subjects, with enhanced activity of the Wnt/b-catenin signalling pathway and higher concentrations of different metabolic regulators such as 4E-BP1 and fibroblast growth factor 21. Among the Tanzanian volunteers, food-derived metabolites were identified as an important driver of variation in inflammation-related molecules, emphasizing the potential importance of lifestyle changes. These findings endorse the importance of the current dietary transition and the inclusion of underrepresented populations in systems immunology studies.

Data availability

Anonymized metadata of the Tanzanian participants and the circulating inflammation markers are available in an open access registry (DANS registry; https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-xgx-zuht) Untargeted plasma metabolome data have been deposited to the EMBL-EBI MetaboLights database (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/metabolights/); study identifier MTBLS2267.The source data of the proteomics analysis are provided in Supplemental Table 5.Publicly available databases used for this study include KEGG (https://www.genome.jp/kegg/), HMDB (https://www.hmdb.ca/) and ChEBI (https://ebi.ac.uk/chebi/). All other data is available in the main text and supplementary materials.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Godfrey S Temba

    Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1093-3037

  2. Nadira Vadaq

    Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  3. Vesla Kullaya

    Department of Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, Moshi, United Republic of Tanzania
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6120-3985

  4. Tal Pecht

    Department for Genomics and Immunoregulation, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  5. Paolo Lionetti

    Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  6. Duccio Cavalieri

    Department of Biology, University of Florence, Sesto Fiorentino (Florence), Italy
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  7. Joachim L Schultze

    Department for Genomics and Immunoregulation, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  8. Reginald Kavishe

    Department of Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, Moshi, United Republic of Tanzania
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  9. Leo AB Joosten

    Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6166-9830

  10. Andre J van der Ven

    Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1833-3391

  11. Blandina T Mmbaga

    Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute, Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, Moshi, United Republic of Tanzania
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

  12. Mihai G Netea

    Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-2421-6052

  13. Quirijn de Mast

    Department of Internal Medicine, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands
    For correspondence
    quirijn.demast@radboudumc.nl
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-6056-157X

Funding

HORIZON EUROPE European Research Council (the Joint Programming Initiative,A Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life (JPI-HDHL; project 529051018))

  • Mihai G Netea

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: Ethical statementThe study was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College (CRERC) (No 2443) and the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR/HQ/R.8a/Vol. IX/2290 and NIMR/HQ/R.8a/Vol.IX/3318) in Tanzania. The 500FG cohort study was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Radboud University Medical Centre Nijmegen, the Netherlands (NL42561.091.12, 2012/550). Subject recruitment and experimental procedures were conducted according to the principles mentioned in the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

Copyright

© 2023, Temba et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Godfrey S Temba
  2. Nadira Vadaq
  3. Vesla Kullaya
  4. Tal Pecht
  5. Paolo Lionetti
  6. Duccio Cavalieri
  7. Joachim L Schultze
  8. Reginald Kavishe
  9. Leo AB Joosten
  10. Andre J van der Ven
  11. Blandina T Mmbaga
  12. Mihai G Netea
  13. Quirijn de Mast
(2023)
Differences in the inflammatory proteome of East African and Western European adults and associations with environmental and dietary factors
eLife 12:e82297.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.82297

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.82297

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