A preliminary study on the utilisation of near infrared spectroscopy to predict age and in vivo human metabolism

The objective of this study was to evaluate the ability of a portable near infrared (NIR) instrument to analyse different tissues in healthy individuals in vivo and relate the spectral data with age, resting metabolic rate (RMR), respiratory quotient (RQ), body fat (BF) and body mass index (BMI). A NIR (950-1600 nm) instrument was used to collect the spectra of different tissues and partial least squares (PLS) regression was used to relate the NIR with RMR, RQ, BF and BMI. Results shown that non-destructive techniques such as those based in vibrational spectroscopy have potential to be used as tools to better categorise and understand the complex inter-individual differences that determine interactions between physiology and nutrition. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the ability of a portable NIR instrument to analyze different tissues in healthy individuals and correlate spectral data with age, RMR, RQ, BF, and BMI. The results suggest that non-destructive techniques like vibrational spectroscopy have the potential to better categorize and understand individual differences in physiology and nutrition.