Associations of FAAH rs324420 with serum lipid profiles are diversified by a high-carbohydrate diet in healthy Chinese adolescents

Objectives

The present study is to investigate changes of serum lipid profiles in the healthy Chinese adolescents with different genotypes of rs324420 polymorphism at fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) gene (FAAH) after a high-carbohydrate (HC) diet.

Methods

Fifty-one healthy university students (24 males and 27 females, aged 22.87 ± 1.82 years) were recruited by advertisements. The subjects were given a washout diet of 54.1 % carbohydrate for 7 days, followed by a HC diet of 70.1 % carbohydrate for 6 days. The anthropometric and biological parameters including serum lipid levels were analyzed using routine methods at baseline, after washout diet and after HC diet. Body mass index (BMI) and the ratios of LDL-C/HDL-C, TC/HDL-C and TG/HDL-C were calculated. Meanwhile, FAAH rs324420 was genotyped by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism technique and verified by DNA sequencing.

Results

After HC diet, all individuals exhibited reduced LDL-C, TC, LDL-C/HDL-C, and TC/HDL-C. Although TC lowering effect of HC diet was not dependent on gender and FAAH rs324420 polymorphism, CC homozygotes might be more susceptible than A allele carriers to the reduced TC/HDL-C after HC diet only in males. Moreover, LDL-C/HDL-C declined only in male CC homozygotes, while TG increased exclusively only in female CC homozygotes after HC diet.

Conclusions

These results indicate that the HC diet has the potential to induce distinct alterations in serum lipid levels and their ratios among healthy Chinese Han adolescents with different genders and genotypes of FAAH rs324420.