The WHO's report on noncommunicable diseases

The World Health Organization of the United Nations has released a report titled "Global status report on noncommunicable diseases." Access to the report and its individual chapters is at this link. I was particularly interested in Chapter 1 and the major contributing factors to noncommunicable diseases (NCD).

According to the above report and others from the WHO, the four primary contributors to global increases in NCDs, such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases, are:

tobacco

harmful use of alcohol

unhealthy diet

physical inactivity

While such a list is really not surprising, what I do take from this, with respect to my own research on the genetic basis for the differential response to the diet as it pertains to metabolic diseases, is these are our key environmental factors used to assess gene by environment, or GxE, interactions. In other words, while these factors are strong contributors to NCD onset and progression, genetic differences exert different influences on the disease risk, onset and progression in different individuals. That influence could be negative - increasing risk - or positive - being more protective.

Thus, the importance of GxE identification cannot be overlooked, and ought really to be emphasized in genetic association studies.

Migraine and cardiovascular disease risk

A few recent papers report associations between migraine and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. This is particularly true for migraine with aura. Another study shows that this link is found in women. What is most exciting is the recent publication by Markus Schürks and colleagues reporting findings from a candidate gene study on the genetic basis of migraine. The data imply that polymorphisms of genes encoding constituents of inflammation pathways and migraine in women are associated. These genes include TNF, CCR2, TGFB1, NOS3, and IL9. We have looked at a few of these genes with respect to dyslipidemia, obesity and metabolic syndrome.

While it would be nice to look for direct connections between biomarkers of CVD and migraine, the phenotype collection of two of the largest and most useful populations with which we work do not contain information from the subjects on migraine or pain in general. These populations are GOLDN and BPRHS. This is where the proposed Nutrition Phenotype database project could come in handy. This group is calling for more extensive phenotyping of subjects. The project is in its infancy but an introductory paper has been accepted at Genes and Nutrition. The paper is titled "The Nutritional Phenotype database to store, share and evaluate nutritional systems biology studies" and was authored by B. van Ommen, J. Bouwman, L. Dragsted, C. A. Drevon, R. Elliott, P. de Groot, J. Kaput, J. C. Mathers, M. Müller, F. Pepping, J. Saito, A. Scalbert, M. Radonjic, P. Rocca-Serra, T. Travis , S. Wopereis and C. Evelo.