New insights into the mechanisms of bioactive food components: integrative nutrition and health promotion in clinical trials

The research, describes the ultimate goal of the clinical nutrition scientist. The purpose of the research was to translate scientific findings into practical clinical application: it has been presented the data obtained during the Smart Trial Arancia Rossa (A randomized trial on the effect of a regular supplementation with an anthocyanin-rich drink on side effects of non-steroidal aromatase inhibitor treatment in post-menopausal patients with breast cancer), focusing on a number of bioactive compounds (anthocyanins) that have to varying degrees been associated with health benefits. Through the use of collaborative practices (blood and urine samples collection, food records and anthropometrics measurements) it has been noticed a relevant challenge before and after the counselling sessions, related to the Trimethylamine N-oxide changes. Investigations of the relation of single foods or food groups and risk of chronic diseases are on-going activities in nutrition epidemiology: meal pattern analyses were also linked with metabolic biomarkers, giving in-sight into the metabolic consequences of certain circadian food habits. I was involved in a project of the variation of serum metabolites according to alcohol consumption using a targeted metabolomics approach in European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Germany in breast cancer patients and I have studied the analysis of 24hRecall records using a multivariate model. Epidemiologists are also interested in assessing whether an exposure is associated with a particular disease with new technologies: it has been developed Alimendiary, a flexible application system to search data by food name, creating to offer a benefit and there is the strong evidence that decision support tools can improve the quality of clinical decision making and some evidence it can lower costs.