Analysis of time-resolved postprandial metabolomics data can enhance our knowledge about the human metabolism by providing a better understanding of regulation of subgroups of metabolites (e.g., lipids) and variations in postprandial responses of subgroups of people, with the potential to ultimately advance precision medicine. However, characterizing postprandial metabolomics response and understanding group differences is a challenging task since it requires the analysis of large-scale metabolomics data from a large set of individuals containing measurements of a wide set of metabolites at multiple time points. Such data is in the form of a three-way array: subjects by metabolites by time points. The state-of-the-art analysis methods mainly focus on clustering temporal profiles relying on summaries of the data across subjects or univariate analysis techniques studying one metabolite at a time, and fail to associate subgroups of subjects and subsets of metabolites with the dynamic time profile simultaneously.

In this study, we use NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy measurements of plasma samples (of over three hundred individuals from the COPSAC2000 cohort) collected at multiple time points during a challenge test.  We use a multi-way analysis technique called the CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) model to extract interpretable patterns from the time-resolved data. We compare the analysis of postprandial data, fasting state-corrected data and only fasting state data, and demonstrate the differences between different analysis approaches.

Our results show that the CP model reveals biologically meaningful patterns capturing how certain metabolite groups and their temporal profiles relate to various meta variables, in particular, BMI (body mass index), confirming already known biological knowledge as well as revealing new biological insights.