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Title: Indian women of childbearing age do not metabolically conserve arginine as do American and Jamaican women

Author
item KAO, CHRISTINA - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item HSU, JEAN - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item DWARKANATH, PRATIBHA - St John'S National Academy Of Health Sciences
item KARNES, JEFFREY - Baylor College Of Medicine
item BAKER, TAMEKA - University Of The West Indies
item BOHREN, KURT - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item BADALOO, ASHA - University Of The West Indies
item THAME, MINERVA - University Of The West Indies
item KURPAD, ANURA - St John'S National Academy Of Health Sciences
item JAHOOR, FAROOK - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)

Submitted to: Journal of Nutrition
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/11/2015
Publication Date: 5/1/2015
Citation: Kao, C.C., Hsu, J.W., Dwarkanath, P., Karnes, J.M., Baker, T.M., Bohren, K.M., Badaloo, A., Thame, M.M., Kurpad, A.V., Jahoor, F. 2015. Indian women of childbearing age do not metabolically conserve arginine as do American and Jamaican women. Journal of Nutrition. 145(5):884-892.

Interpretive Summary: Arginine is a compound that is very important for normal growth of a baby during pregnancy because it is needed to make new body proteins and also to make nitric oxide, a compound that is needed for the pregnant mother's blood to flow freely to the growing baby to deliver sufficient nutrition. As expected, in a previous study in pregnant American and Jamaican women, we found that arginine and nitric oxide made by the mother increases as pregnancy progresses. However, in a similar study in Indian women we found that arginine and nitric oxide made by the mother did not increase as pregnancy progresses. Most importantly, the women who produced less arginine had smaller babies and a high number of those babies were low birth weight babies. This is a big problem in the world because low birth weight babies are sicker, have a higher death rate and when they grow up to be adults they have a higher rate of diabetes and heart disease. We therefore wanted to find out why pregnant Indian women were making less arginine and wondered whether this may be a problem with Indian women on the whole, regardless of whether they were pregnant or not. To find out, we decided to study arginine and nitric oxide in 10 healthy normal weight Indian, American and Jamaican women who were not pregnant. We found that, compared to American women, Indian women had less arginine available to make protein and nitric oxide because they were converting a lot of their arginine to another compound named ornithine. Although Jamaican women were doing the same thing they did not have a shortage of arginine because they were making more arginine to maintain supply. Because a woman gets arginine from two sources, the amount she makes in her body plus the amount she gets from the protein in her meals, the findings of this study suggest that adult Indian women who are thinking of becoming pregnant should eat more protein so they will have a sufficient amount for their growing baby.

Technical Abstract: In a previous study in pregnant American women, we reported that arginine flux and nitric oxide synthesis increased in trimester 2. More recently, we reported that Indian women do not increase arginine flux during pregnancy as their American or Jamaican counterparts do. The purpose of this study was to determine whether Indian women of childbearing age are producing less arginine and/or catabolizing more arginine and therefore have less available for anabolic pathways than do Jamaican and American women. Thirty healthy women aged 28.3 +/- 0.8 y from the United States, India, and Jamaica (n = 10/group) were given 6 h primed, constant intravenous infusions of guanidino-1 (5)N2-arginine, 5,5-(2)H2-citrulline, (15)N2-ornithine, and ring-(2)H5-phenylalanine, in addition to primed, oral doses of U-(13)C6-arginine in both the fasting and postprandial states. An oral dose of deuterium oxide was also given to determine fat-free mass (FFM). Compared with American women, Indian and Jamaican women had greater ornithine fluxes (umol / kg fat FFM**(-1) / h**(-1)) in the fasting and postprandial states (27.3 +/- 2.5 vs. 39.6 +/- 3.7 and 37.2 +/- 2.0, respectively, P = 0.01), indicating greater arginine catabolism. However, Jamaican women had a higher endogenous arginine flux than did Indian and American women in the fasting (66.1 +/- 3.1 vs. 54.2 +/- 3.1 and 56.1 +/- 2.1, respectively, P = 0.01) and postprandial (53.8 +/- 2.2 vs. 43.7 +/- 4.9 and 42.8 +/- 3.1, respectively, P = 0.06) states. As a consequence, Indian women had lower arginine bioavailability (umol / kg FFM**(-1) / h**(-1)) in the fasting state (42.0 +/- 2.6) than did American (49.9 +/- 1.3, P = 0.045) and Jamaican (55.5 +/- 3.5, P = 0.004) women, as well as in the postprandial state (40.7 +/- 3.5 vs. 51.8 +/- 1.2 and 57.5 +/- 3.2, respectively, P = 0.001). Compared with American and Jamaican women, Indian women of childbearing age have a decreased arginine supply because of increased arginine catabolism without an increase in arginine flux.