Nutrition expert lectures in Kannapolis

Zeisel

By Emily Ford

eford@salisburypost.com

KANNAPOLIS — Nutrition scientists at the N.C. Research Campus are working to discover and document genetic differences in people, so doctors can create personalized diets for their patients.

Called "individualized nutrition," the research could help determine why some people can eat a high-fat diet for years with no ill effects while others become obese as children.

It also could help some people ward off diseases like diabetes and cancer by changing what they eat.

"Diet can change the settings on your genes," said Dr. Steven Zeisel, director of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Nutrition Research Institute.

Zeisel, who spoke at a free lecture Tuesday night in Kannapolis, predicted that within five years, physicians and dieticians will be using a blood test created in part with research done in Kannapolis to recommend personalized diets.

The blood test will detect genetic changes — Zeisel calls them "gene misspellings" — that affect metabolism. People can have up to 50,000 variations in their genetic code, but most are still not well understood.

Zeisel said doctors will use specialized computer programs to look up their patients' genetic variations and then develop individualized nutrition recommendations.

Rather than making general recommendations based on average nutritional requirements, physicians and dieticians will treat each patient as an individual.

They could tell a patient who doesn't metabolize folate well to take additional folic acid each day.

They might suggest eating more eggs to someone whose liver doesn't produce enough of the nutrient choline, essential for preventing birth defects.

They could warn a patient whose body doesn't remove iron efficiently to avoid supplements with iron.

"There are large parts of the population that respond differently to one nutrient," Zeisel said.

Each gene has a switch that turns it on and off. Chemical groups tell the gene whether to respond to the switch.

Genes that don't turn on and off as they should can cause disease and other problems.

Many ingredients that make up these chemical groups come from food, Zeisel said.

"We have a new understanding not only of the the misspellings and groups, but of the switches that can be reset by lifestyle," he said.

With additional research, "we could predict with much more accuracy where you need to be in terms of nutrition," he said.

While genetic testing is available now, it's expensive and often inconclusive, Zeisel said.

"For $2,500 now, it will tell you the spelling mistakes in your genetic code," he said. "But it can't tell you what that means."

Scientists at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute want to develop a "dictionary" of genetic variations.

"That is the work of the NRI," he said.

Other institutes at the Research Campus, a $1.5 billion life sciences complex founded by Dole Food Co. owner David Murdock, will play a role, Zeisel said.

The campus centerpiece Core Lab has world-class instruments that can measure genetic variations, "but it doesn't have the dictionary needed to say what each one means, or the computer program written to compile all misspellings into a set of recommendations," he said.

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, one of eight universities with a presence in Kannapolis, will help create the computer program using bioinformatics, Zeisel said.

"Then we can teach the physicians and dieticians how to make use of this," he said. "They never learned this in school."

The UNC Nutrition Research Institute will present two more free lectures at 7 p.m. in the Core Lab meeting room:

- "Fish or Flax: Does Your Brain Need an Oil Change?" by Dr. Carol Cheatham on Feb. 9

- "Polar Bear to Pop: The Changing Diet of the Inuit," by Dr. Sangita Sharma, Feb. 16

Register online at www.uncnri.org/appetite.asp.