Amino Acid Metabolic Signature Links Pediatric Environmental Enteric Dysfunction to Maternal-Fetal Growth Restriction Across Two Independent Cohorts

Amino acid and nucleotide metabolism reactions distinguish pediatric environmental enteric dysfunction from controls and overlap with maternal-fetal growth restriction proxies, especially low birth weight, in two cohorts.

• Why it matters: It is unclear whether EED metabolic signatures reflect acquired intestinal pathology after birth or earlier growth restriction signals from pregnancy.
• What they did: Genome-scale metabolic modeling (Human1 with RIPTiDe) integrated duodenal transcriptomics from SEEM (52 children with EED, 24 controls) and maternal plasma proteomics from AMANHI (n = 2,485), then used flux sampling and Linear Discriminant Analysis across five growth proxies.
• The result: Among 50 reactions distinguishing EED from control, 24 (48%) also ranked among top reactions in at least one proxy, and 19 (38%) overlapped with low birth weight, motivating longitudinal studies.

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