Personalized nutrition and cardiovascular disease prevention: From Framingham to PREDIMED

Back in 2014, we revised for the first time the existing evidence concerning the existing evidence on nutrigenetic effects in human populations that could support personalized nutrition in practice.

Diet is considered the cornerstone for the prevention of age-related diseases, and a low-fat diet has been considered for decades as the most suitable alternative to achieve this goal. However, mounting evidence supports the efficacy of other alternatives, such as the Mediterranean diet. Nevertheless, it is well known that people present a dramatic range of responses to similar environmental challenges, and it has been shown that some of this variability is rooted in the genome. In fact, this knowledge is driving the field of nutrigenetics.

The finding of interactions between diet and genetic variants has led to intense research and debate about the effectiveness of personalized nutrition as a more suitable tool for the prevention of chronic diseases than the traditional 1-size-fits-all recommendations.

Here, we provide some of our own examples that illustrate the progression of nutrigenetics through the years, from the initial studies within the Framingham Heart Study to the most recent use of large consortia, such as the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology and ending up with large dietary intervention studies, such as the PREDIMED (Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea) study. These recent approaches are providing more robust and clinically relevant gene-diet interactions. Therefore, although the current evidence level of applying genomic information to tailoring is at its early stages, the prospect of widespread incorporation of nutrigenetics into the clinical practice is encouraging.

The original publication can be found in PUBMED, National Library of Medicine