What is precision nutrition?
The National Institute of Health defines precision (personalized) nutrition as a framework that is focused on a number of features relevant to individual and population health, including genetics, dietary habits, socioeconomic status, and the microbiome. The concept of personalized nutrition in the scientific community can encompass the use of blood biomarkers, genetics, epigenetics, protein abundance, metabolites, and the gut microbiome to tailor nutrition recommendations with the aim of improving an individual’s health.What is the meaning of Nutrigenomics?
Nutrigenomics is the branch of science investigating the interactions between nutrition and the host (genome) through omics technologies. Successful completion of the Human Genome Project in 2000 resulted in the emergence of the omics technologies: metabolomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metagenomics in nutrition science. These technologies have improved, becoming more reproducible and cost effective. Data analysis strategies were developed and incorporated into easy-to-use software packages for nonexperts. Consequently, many more nutrition scientists incorporate some form of omics technology into their research today.
Health care providers (HCPs), including dietitians, are encountering genetic testing for personalized nutrition (i.e., nutrigenomics) in their clinical practice. Although considerable basic research examining diet-gene interactions exists in the literature, comparatively less knowledge is available regarding the use of nutrigenomics in clinical practice to alter dietary outcomes.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has developed a care map to provide a tool for the nutrigenomics process in clinical practice for adult patients in health care settings. The care map builds directly on the Academy’s recent consensus statement on incorporating genetic testing into dietetics practice, as well as the position statement of the Academy on nutritional genomics.
A recent statement from the American Nutrition Association declared that “personalized nutrition is the most powerful antidote to chronic disease,” and the 2017 Visioning Report from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics stated that, with respect to personalized nutrition, RDs “can assume an increasingly important role in the emerging health care system that focuses on a genetic predisposition model of health and disease, disease prevention, and integrative health care.”
Nutrigenomics is becoming more common in clinical practice and the application of genetic information to personalizing nutrition recommendations is gaining great importance in the nutritional science and healthcare field.
References:
- Brennan L, de Roos B. Nutrigenomics: lessons learned and future perspectives. Am J Clin Nutr. (2021) 113:503–16. DOI: 10.1093/ajcn/nqaa366
- Horne J, Nielsen D, Madill J, Robitaille J, Vohl M-C, Mutch D. Guiding global best practice in personalized nutrition based on genetics: the development of a nutrigenomics care map. J Acad Nutr Dietetics. (2021) 122:259–69. DOI: 10.1016/j.jand.2021.02.008
Dima El-Halabi, MSc, RDN
Human Nutrition and Dietetics (HND) Program
College of Health Sciences
Abu Dhabi University
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