Preliminary evidence of effects of potassium chloride on a metabolomic path to diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

INTRODUCTION Low potassium intake can affect cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and cardiometabolic risk factors. OBJECTIVE We hypothesize that potassium chloride (KCl) supplementation can improve cardiovascular risk metabolomic profile. METHODS In this secondary analysis of a pilot randomized clinical trial (RCT) of 26 participants with prediabetes randomized to KCl or placebo, we performed targeted mass-spectrometry-based metabolomic profiling on baseline and 12-week (end-of-study) plasma samples. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce the many correlated metabolites into fewer, independent factors that retain most of the information in the original data. RESULTS Those taking KCl had significant reductions (corresponding to lower cardiovascular risk) in the branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) factor (P = 0.004) and in valine levels (P = 0.02); and non-significant reductions in short-chain acylcarnitines (SCA) factor (P = 0.11). CONCLUSIONS KCl supplementation may improve circulating BCAA levels, which may reflect improvements in overall cardiometabolic risk profile. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRY Clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT02236598; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02236598.