Enteropancreatic hormone changes in caloric-restricted diet interventions associate with post-intervention weight maintenance

BACKGROUND & AIMS: To explore enteropancreatic hormone changes during isocaloric-restricted dietary interventions and their impact on post-intervention weight maintenance. METHODS: 253 individuals with overweight/obesity and prediabetes were randomly assigned to 25% isocaloric-restricted diets: Control diet, Traditional Jiangnan diet or Mediterranean diet. Serum hormones and clinical indices were evaluated at 0, 3 and 6 months. Body weight values were collected again 6 months after completing interventions. RESULTS: We observed decreased fasting and post-glucose load levels of glucagon, amylin, peptide YY, and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) while increased ghrelin at three months after 25% calorie restriction (CR) of three dietary interventions, and most of these changes were sustained through the six month-treatment period. Interestingly, changes in appetite-inhibitory hormones glucagon, amylin and GLP-1 showed positive associations with body weight change while appetite-promoting hormone ghrelin showed an inverse association during intervention. Furthermore, subjects with more reduction in amylin and GLP-1, or more increase in ghrelin during intervention showed a greater increase in body weight after completing intervention. CONCLUSIONS: CR intervention results in consistent hormone signatures regardless of dietary patterns. More changes in amylin, GLP-1 or ghrelin levels during CR are associated with poor weight maintenance after intervention, supporting that CR-induced hormone changes as biomarkers for predicting weight maintenance after intervention. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT03856762.