Dietary Protein, DIAAS, Anabolism, and Cardiometabolic Health: A Review and Future Perspectives.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Narrative review of protein quality metrics, muscle protein synthesis, and cardiometabolic outcomes without systematic review methodology
PubMed 42520313 · doi:10.1093/nutrit/nuag101
What was done
The authors conducted a narrative literature review evaluating the role of dietary protein quality—measured by the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) and amino acid composition—on protein kinetics, muscle protein synthesis (MPS), whole-body net balance, and cardiometabolic health in younger and older adults.
What was found
The abstract reports no quantitative values or effect estimates. It qualitatively reports that higher-quality proteins improve indispensable amino acid bioavailability, net protein balance, and muscle preservation compared to lower-quality proteins. It also notes contrasting associations where specific amino acids (such as cysteine, glycine, arginine, glutamine, and glutamate) may benefit cardiometabolic outcomes, whereas amino acids prevalent in high-quality proteins (such as branched-chain amino acids, lysine, and methionine) are linked to increased cardiometabolic disease risk.
Why it matters
This review highlights how the DIAAS framework characterizes protein quality for muscle anabolism while emphasizing the potential trade-offs and nuances when considering overall cardiometabolic risk.
Limits
The abstract describes a narrative review without detailing search criteria, screening procedures, quality assessments, or quantitative data synthesis. Specific effect sizes, population counts, and direct cardiometabolic clinical endpoints were not quantified in the abstract.
Cited by
- supports The Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) is a scoring system used to measure the quality of dietary protein sources.