Serum non-esterified fatty acids have utility as dietary biomarkers of fat intake from fish, fish oil, and dairy in women

Nutritional studies rely on various biological specimens for fatty acid (FA) determination, yet it is unclear how levels of serum non-esterified FA (NEFAs) correlate with other circulating lipid pools. Here, we used a high throughput method (< 4 min/sample) based on multisegment injection-non-aqueous-capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (MSI-NACE-MS) to investigate whether specific serum NEFAs have utility as biomarkers of dietary fat intake in women. We first identified circulating NEFAs correlated with long-term/habitual food intake among pregnant women with contrasting dietary patterns (n = 50). Acute changes in serum NEFA trajectories were also studied in non-pregnant women (n = 18) following highdose (5 g/day) fish oil (FO) supplementation or isoenergetic sunflower oil placebo over 56 days. In the cross-sectional study, serum omega-3 (ω-3) FA correlated with self-reported total ω-3 daily intake, notably eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) as its NEFA (r = 0.46; p = 0.001), whereas pentadecanoic acid was associated with full-fat dairy intake (r = 0.43; p = 0.002), outcomes consistent with results from total FA serum hydrolysates. In the intervention cohort, serum ω-3 NEFAs increased 2.5-fold from baseline within 28 days following FO supplementation, and this increase was most pronounced for EPA (p = 0.0004). Unlike for docosahexaenoic acid, circulating EPA as its NEFA also strongly correlated to EPA concentrations measured from erythrocyte phospholipid hydrolysates (r = 0.66; p = 4.6 × 10-10), and was better suited to detect dietary non-adherence. We conclude that MSI-NACE-MS offers a rapid method to quantify serum NEFAs and objectively monitor dietary fat intake in women that is complementary to diet records or food frequency questionnaires.