The Large Scale Identification and Quantification of Conjugates of Intact and Gut Microbial Bioconversion Products of Polyphenols

A human diet containing a significant amount of flavonoids, such as present in tea, red wine, apple, and cocoa has been associated with reduced disease risks. After consumption, a part of these flavonoids can be directly absorbed by the small intestine, but the greatest part passages towards the large intestine where microbes break the flavonoids down into phenolic metabolites. After absorption into the blood, both intact and metabolized flavonoids are subsequently methylated, sulphated, and glucuronidated or a combination thereof. The exact chemical structural elucidation and quantification of these conjugates present in the human body are key to identify potential bioactive components. However, this is still a tedious task due to their relative low abundance in a complex background of other high-abundant metabolites and the many possible isomeric forms. Therefore, we aimed to systematically identify these conjugates by using a combination of pre-concentration and separation by solid phase extraction (SPE) followed by LC-FTMSⁿ and 1D ¹H NMR. The combination of LC-FTMSⁿ and HPLC-TOF-MS-SPE-NMR resulted in the efficient identification and quantification of low abundant polyphenol metabolites down to micromolar concentrations and thus opens up new perspectives for in depth studying of the bioavailability and the possible mode of action of flavonoids like flavan-3-ols and their gut-microbial break-down products circulating in the human body.