Nutritional Influence on Epigenetics and Disease

Nutrition plays an important role in disease prevention and even in therapeutic interventions. Nutrigenomics has provided invaluable information of the relationship between food intake and gene expression. Nutrition has also been linked to epigenetic mechanisms, which can substantially affect disease development. In this context, aberrant DNA methylation, histone modifications and RNA interference have been associated with increased risk and progress of a wide variety of diseases such as cancer, metabolic, and cardiovascular diseases and neurological disorders. In this review, examples will be presented on how nutritional interventions affect epigenetic mechanisms influencing disease development. Furthermore, design of personalized nutrition and its relationship to epigenetics is discussed.