About the Authors

Fabian Frost

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Lena J. Storck

Roles Data curation, Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany, Department of Medicine, Cantonal Hospital Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland

Tim Kacprowski

Roles Data curation, Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Functional Genomics, Interfaculty Institute for Genetics and Functional Genomics, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany, Chair of Experimental Bioinformatics, TUM School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan, Technical University of Munich, Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany

Simone Gärtner

Roles Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Malte Rühlemann

Roles Data curation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

Corinna Bang

Roles Data curation

Affiliation Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

Andre Franke

Roles Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

Uwe Völker

Roles Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Functional Genomics, Interfaculty Institute for Genetics and Functional Genomics, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Ali A. Aghdassi

Roles Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Antje Steveling

Roles Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Julia Mayerle

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany, Department of Medicine II, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany

Frank U. Weiss

Roles Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Georg Homuth

Roles Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Department of Functional Genomics, Interfaculty Institute for Genetics and Functional Genomics, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Markus M. Lerch

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

lerch@uni-greifswald.de

Affiliation Department of Medicine A, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

Competing Interests

Nestlé Health Science Germany granted the study participants a 15% discount to the Optifast formula diet. LS received a Gerhard Domagk scholarship from University Medicine Greifswald made possible through an unrestricted educational grant from Baxter Deutschland GmbH (Unterschleissheim, Germany), Profusio GmbH (Greven, Germany) and Nutricia GmbH (Erlangen, Germany). This does not alter our adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.