Advantages and Disadvantages of Nutrigenomics

Advantages and Disadvantages of Nutrigenomics The word â€Å"Nutrigenomics† is a combination of nutrition and genomics. Nutrition is about the relationship between food and health; genomics is the study of entire genetic makeup of an organism and how they are expressed and regulated. Therefore, nutrigenomics is a field which concerned about the relationship between diet and gene expression by describing the approach to nutrition and human health that studies the implication of genetic differences in human response to food and how food alter the gene expression, biochemistry, metabolism and promotion of health (Elliot R, 2002). In other words, nutrigenomics is the study and application of gene and nutrition interaction. Besides, nutrigenomics also provides a basis for understanding the biological activity of food components (Rawson N, 2008). In addition, nutrigenomics has also been described by the influence of genetic variation on nutrition by correlate the gene expression with a nutrient’s absorption, metabolism and how it is eliminated from our body. In nutrigenomics, nutrients are seen as signals that are detected by a sensory system in the cell that tells the body cells about its environment (diet). Once the nutrient interacts with such system, it alters the gene, metabolite production and protein expression in depending on the level of nutrient it detected (Afman and Muller M, 2006). Hence, different diets will elicit different patterns of gene, protein expression and metabolite production. Such patterns of effects have been referred to as dietary signatures, where they are examined to investigate how homeostasis is influenced (Afman and Muller M, 2006). There are many ways on how nutrigenomics is useful to improve quality of life. Firstly, nutrigenomics define the causality relationship between specific nutrients and diet on human health by determining the mechanism of the effect of the nutrients or diet to human body. Besides, nutrigenomics helps to facilitate prevention through dieta ry modification when the diet-related diseases are detected in early stage. Nutrigenomics also allows the examination on how nutrients affect the genes present in the human genome. With all these reasons, nutrigenomics promotes and improves the understanding of people on how nutrition influence metabolic pathways and alter the homeostatic control in our body. Moreover, nutrigenomics is also able to demonstrate the impact of bioactive food compounds and its effect on human health, which should lead to the development of functional foods that will keep people healthy based to their individual needs. Then, this will further prevent development of chronic diet-related disease such as cardiovascular diseases, obesity and Type 2 diabetes mellitus. In addition, nutrigenomics also involve in finding markers of the early phase of diet-related diseases. At this phase, intervention with nutrition approach can restore patient’s health. Once a marker has been found and measured in an indi vidual, the stage of susceptibility of the person to develop the diet-related diseases can be quantified and personalized dietary recommendation can be then given to that particular individual and further improve his or her quality of life. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the lifestyle diseases and it is the most common cause of death all over the world. In Malaysia, about 30% of deaths are caused by CVD (WHO, 2009). There are many factors that can lead to CVD. For example, elevated low density lipoprotein (LDL) level, low level of high density lipoprotein (HDL) and high level of total cholesterol. Diet has a significant effect on CVD. However, long term health benefits can be obtained from dietary proteins and bioactive non-nutrients, called phytochemicals, which could be either integrated into the diet or be part of the food itself. One of the foods that can be used to reduce the risk of getting CVD is soybean. Soybean contain soy protein and it contains phytoestrogens whic h bind to estrogen receptors in the body. Besides, soybean also contains high level of Isoflavones. There are three major isoflavones in soybeans which are genistein, daidzein and glycetein. Isoflavones have a non-steroidal structure. However, they possess a phenolic ring that enables them to bind the estrogen receptor and act either as estrogen agonists or antagonists (Makela et al., 1995).