Biomarkers for Nutritional Assessment

Author(s): Tannu Rana and Mayuri Rastogi

Abstract:

Assessing the food intake and its effect in our body has become a major concern as food and our dietary habits can tell us a lot about our health and nutritional status. An individual’s nutritional status tells us how effectively their physiological nutrient demands are being satisfied at a specific stage of life. Biomarkers are more accurate and provide accurate nutritional assessment. Assessment can be done with the help of questionnaires and as well as biomarkers that are present in food or formed inside are body. Biomarkers play a major role for assessing the nutritional status of an individual. These can be overcome by using biomarkers which can assess the food consumption without any dietary assessment. Biomarkers can be affected by the state of health so, it’s important to identify the biological effect of food and their impact on our health. Biomarkers can be analyzed by two methods that is static and functional analysis. Static analysis measures the concentration of a nutrient or a bioactive compound or a biomarker whereas functional analysis looks upon the response or function. Sources of biomarkers can be many ranging from the urine to hair, nails or the sample collection from hard tissues. These biomarkers can be used to measure intake, analyze the physiological or pathological responses to certain food components or diets, identify any dietary deficiency, to provide individual recommendations. Different approaches such as “omics” can help to determine new biomarkers and to improve our knowledge of biomarkers in relation to nutrition and health and that are genetic biomarkers, transcriptase biomarkers, epigenetic biomarkers, proteomic biomarkers and many more.

Keywords: Nutritional Assessment, Biomarkers, Bioactive Compounds, Functional Analysis

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