About this Research Topic

Background

Diet plays an important role in health maintenance and prevention of chronic diseases. Nutritional status involves the balance between nutrient intake, absorption, and utilization, and for several reasons may become unbalanced due to deficits or excesses in any of these domains. A nutritional biomarker can be defined as a short- or long-term biochemical indicator of nutritional status and/or dietary intake, related to constituents of nutrient metabolism or determining the biological effects of dietary intake. Objective measured biochemical biomarkers of nutrient intake using serum, plasma, urine, and stool specimens are needed to establish reliable diet-disease associations.

Biochemical biomarkers of nutrient circulation and storage have long been used in clinical practice but have limitations especially in the setting of acute and chronic diseases. The accurate assessment of such nutrient intake is challenging and robust biomarkers of nutrient intake are scarce. In this sense, there is a need for accurate and reliable analytical determinants that can accurately reflect the individual's nutritional status, exposure and biological effects (bioavailability) of nutrients.

With the potential high dimensionality of the measurements from different specimens from different resources, new methods are needed for new biomarker development and its application in diet-disease association studies. Biomarkers are tools of great importance for nutrition, both in terms of nutritional diagnosis and in helping to validate methods for assessing food intake. In addition, with advances in omics science studies, new promising biomarkers may contribute even more to this area.

This Research Topic aims to collate original research and systematic review articles to highlight recent advances in the development, validation, and implementation of biochemical biomarkers of nutritional status in health and disease situations, specifically biochemical biomarkers of nutrient intake and their bioavailability.

We welcome submissions covering but not limited to the following subtopics:
• Methods and applications in developing and validating biochemical biomarkers of nutrient intake from either animal or human studies;
• Development and application of biochemical biomarkers of nutrient absorption;
• Biochemical biomarkers of nutrient bioavailability (absorption, utilization and excretion);
• Biochemical biomarkers of acute and/or chronic nutritional status;
• Interpretation of biochemical biomarkers in clinical practice;
• Applying biochemical nutrition biomarkers for disease association studies;
• Biochemical biomarkers and nutritional genomics (nutrigenetics, nutrigenomics, nutrimiromics, nutrimetabolomics science).

Keywords: nutritional assessment, diet, biochemical, nutrition, biomarker, nutrients

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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