Combining Genes and Nutrition to Promote Health
Eating habits and hereditary factors help explain why people develop obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. An emerging discipline is seeking tools to help solve these health problems: the application of genomics to nutrition has produced nutrigenomics, which studies the interactions among various nutritional components and genomics. This discipline characterizes the genetic and nutritional factors that promote health.
Dr. Marie-Claude Vohl, Canada Research Chair in Applied Nutritional and Metabolic Health Genomics, is conducting research with three objectives in mind. First, Vohl and her team are seeking to identify the genetic and epigenetic factors that modulate cardiometabolic disease risk factors. Second, they are identifying how these genes interact with diet to modulate cardiometabolic disease risk factors. Finally, they are studying the factors that hinder and facilitate the use of nutrigenomic results by health professionals.
Thanks to Vohl’s work, we will learn which genes are involved in the development of cardiometabolic disease risk factors. We will also have a better grasp of how genes interact with dietary components to mitigate or exacerbate a person’s cardiometabolic risk. This research will help identify new therapeutic targets and develop prevention and treatment strategies that are better adapted to an individual’s profile.