Enhanced power and transferability for genetics-driven metabolomic biomarker discovery in admixed American cohorts
- 1British Heart Foundation Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Abstract
Despite metabolomics transforming our understanding of risk factors and aetiology of metabolic diseases, profiling is rarely performed for people of non-European ancestries, on whom much of metabolic disease burden falls. Metabolome-wide association studies (MWAS) can be performed using genetic scores to predict metabolomic traits, helping address these inequities; however, their performance in populations of admixed American (AMR) ancestries is unexplored. We evaluated 141 genetic scores, developed in an INTERVAL Study sample of European (EUR) genetic ancestries, in the Mexico City Prospective Study (MCPS; n=132,336), obtaining a median predictive R{superscript 2} of 0.027. Training Bayesian ridge models within MCPS substantially improved performance, with a median R{superscript 2} of 0.083 on a withheld 20% subset. MCPS-trained models also outperformed INTERVAL-trained models among UK Biobank participants of AMR ancestries (n=600; median R2: 0.070 vs. 0.046). Finally, among AMR participants of the All of Us cohort, using MCPS-trained (vs. INTERVAL-trained) models to predict metabolomic traits yielded five times as many significant associations (FDR-corrected P<0.05) across three cardiometabolic diseases: ischaemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. The genetic scores are openly available at the OmicsPred portal (www.OmicsPred.org), enabling better-powered analyses in diverse AMR cohorts and helping reduce global inequities in omics research.
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BibTeX
@misc{oreskovic2026enhanced,
title = {{Enhanced power and transferability for genetics-driven metabolomic biomarker discovery in admixed American cohorts}},
author = {T. Oreskovic and D. Jin and E. Trichia and D. Aguilar-Ramirez and Y. Xu and C. Foguet and T. Hubbard and M. Turner and A. Vergara-Lope and L. Fernandez-Chirino and L. Gil and M. R. Hill and J. Alegre-Diaz and J. Berumen and S. Lewington and J. R. Emberson and P. Kuri-Morales and R. Tapia-Conyer and J. M. Torres and M. Inouye},
howpublished = {medRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.03.26362043},
url = {https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.03.26362043v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Enhanced power and transferability for genetics-driven metabolomic biomarker discovery in admixed American cohorts
AU - T. Oreskovic
AU - D. Jin
AU - E. Trichia
AU - D. Aguilar-Ramirez
AU - Y. Xu
AU - C. Foguet
AU - T. Hubbard
AU - M. Turner
AU - A. Vergara-Lope
AU - L. Fernandez-Chirino
AU - L. Gil
AU - M. R. Hill
AU - J. Alegre-Diaz
AU - J. Berumen
AU - S. Lewington
AU - J. R. Emberson
AU - P. Kuri-Morales
AU - R. Tapia-Conyer
AU - J. M. Torres
AU - M. Inouye
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/03
PB - medRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.03.26362043
UR - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.03.26362043v1
AB - Despite metabolomics transforming our understanding of risk factors and aetiology of metabolic diseases, profiling is rarely performed for people of non-European ancestries, on whom much of metabolic disease burden falls. Metabolome-wide association studies (MWAS) can be performed using genetic scores to predict metabolomic traits, helping address these inequities; however, their performance in populations of admixed American (AMR) ancestries is unexplored. We evaluated 141 genetic scores, developed in an INTERVAL Study sample of European (EUR) genetic ancestries, in the Mexico City Prospective Study (MCPS; n=132,336), obtaining a median predictive R{superscript 2} of 0.027. Training Bayesian ridge models within MCPS substantially improved performance, with a median R{superscript 2} of 0.083 on a withheld 20% subset. MCPS-trained models also outperformed INTERVAL-trained models among UK Biobank participants of AMR ancestries (n=600; median R2: 0.070 vs. 0.046). Finally, among AMR participants of the All of Us cohort, using MCPS-trained (vs. INTERVAL-trained) models to predict metabolomic traits yielded five times as many significant associations (FDR-corrected P<0.05) across three cardiometabolic diseases: ischaemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. The genetic scores are openly available at the OmicsPred portal (www.OmicsPred.org), enabling better-powered analyses in diverse AMR cohorts and helping reduce global inequities in omics research.
ER -