The Journal of nutrition
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The Journal of nutrition · May 2015
Common Variants and Haplotypes in the TF, TNF-α, and TMPRSS6 Genes Are Associated with Iron Status in a Female Black South African Population.
It is unknown whether single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), associated with iron status in European and Asian populations, have the same relation within the African population. ⋯ Various SNPs and allele combinations in the TF, TNF-α, and TMPRSS6 genes are associated with iron status in black South African women; however, these association patterns are different compared with European ancestry populations. This stresses the need for population-specific genomic data.
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The Journal of nutrition · May 2015
ReviewNutrition and metabolic correlates of obesity and inflammation: clinical considerations.
Since 1980, the global prevalence of obesity has doubled; in the United States, it has almost tripled. Billions of people are overweight and obese; the WHO reports that >65% of the world's population die of diseases related to overweight rather than underweight. Obesity is a complex disease that can be studied from "metropolis to metabolite"—that is, beginning at the policy and the population level through epidemiology and intervention studies; to bench work including preclinical models, tissue, and cell culture studies; to biochemical assays; and to metabolomics. ⋯ This report comments on practical considerations when conducting metabolomics research. The pros and cons and important study design concerns are addressed to aid in increasing metabolomics research in the United States. The link between metabolism and inflammation is an understudied phenomenon that has great potential to transform our understanding of immunometabolism in obesity, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases; metabolomics promises to be an important tool in understanding the complex relations between factors contributing to such diseases.