Your Body Mass Index (BMI) is used frequently as a proxy for your health—but depending on your body type it can be misleading. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been classified as obese in his prime by BMI alone. We have developed another metric, the metabolic BMI or mBMI, based on multiomic profiling that gives a more complete and accurate picture of your health. In this analysis, we report on the changes associated with BMI and over a thousand blood analytes, as well as genomic and microbiomic composition, from a cohort of 1,277 individuals enrolled in a wellness program. We applied machine learning methods to show that a calculated BMI based on blood multi-omics was a better predictor of both metabolic and gut microbiomic health. 

‍

Perhaps most interesting is that we identified different trajectories of multi-omic BMI in response to lifestyle intervention. Our analysis further revealed blood analyte associations that were significantly modified by obesity and partially reversed in the metabolically obese population through the program.

‍

Results roundup:

• Using BMI as a starting point, we investigated the multiomic perturbations associated with obesity 
• A heterogeneity in metabolic states accompanying obesity but not captured by measured BMI was observed through the multi-omics
• These results suggest that a multi-omic BMI could provide deeper clinical insights for obesity and weight loss than the standard BMI measurement

‍

Delve deeper into the science with us!

doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.01.20.22269601

‍