Gemeinschaftsmedizin und Gesundheitserziehung

Abstrakt

The Importance of Dietary Behavior to the Health of Monozygotic Twins

Cardoso C, Afonso C, Bandarra NM

The development, health, and phenotype of monozygotic twins can be decisively affected by dietary behaviour. Several channels of biochemical, microbiological, and physiological differentiation between twins are affected by the particular traits of any given diet and are to be evaluated under a new perspective and point of view. The nutritional factors have a more direct impact in the gut flora, obesity and its associated health problems. Diabetes and cardiovascular diseases show a strong dependency on the dietary options often trumping the genetic aspects may be affected leading to the metabolic syndrome and other diseases. Other systems such as the endocrine and the immune systems also give further examples of the differentiation of health outcomes as a result of dietary patterns. Moreover, cancer frequency, onset, and development are partially related to food constituents, especially in the case of cancer diseases arising in the gastrointestinal tract. The epigenetic changes that occur during lifetime be partially due to nutrition and may contribute to the pathogenesis of cancer. Indeed, some evidence ascribes phenotypic discordance between monozygotic twins partially to epigenetic factors. However, the role of diet in the development, ageing, and health status of monozygotic twins is still not fully understood and warrants further study. It is possible that over the next decade a full characterization of human genomic, epigenomic, and transcriptomic data will be within the reach of most researchers and shed much light onto the interplay of genetic determined processes and nutrition effects.