ABSTRACT
The goal of personalized nutrition and medicine is to get the right nutrient or therapeutic to the right individual at the right time for the right outcome. The need for this informed approach is greatest in pregnant women and infants because lack of key nutrients in critical developmental windows prevent full mental and physical development and may alter health outcomes in adults (1,2). Modern evaluation tools will give clinicians the best available information about how to use a product to maximize its benefit and minimize its side effects. Many of these new technologies may allow individualization of treatment by identifying the individual who is likely to respond well to a treatment and protecting those that may respond adversely. Because food represents more than calories and fiber and is known to contain signaling molecules and morphogens, the “omics” approach (toxicogenomics, epigenomics, pharmacogenomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) applied to pharmaceuticals may be equally applied to nutrients. “Omics” refers to the simultaneous measurement of large numbers of a type of analyte (e.g.,
protein), or the simultaneous measurement of large numbers of many different analytes (nutrigenomics-which may measure many chemicals in foods, RNA, and gene variants).
