A group of scientists from the Center for Biomedical Research Network – Pathophysiology of Obesity and Nutrition (CIBERobn) under the Carlos III Institute of Health, led by Dr. Dolores Corella, and with the collaboration of Professor Oscar Coltell, Department of languages and Systems at the Universitat Jaume I (Spain), has coordinated an international study that has shown that intake of milk and dairy products is not associated with an increased cardiovascular risk in Mediterranean and American populations. In the United States study had the participation of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging in Boston.
So far, in different studies they had produced conflicting results regarding the possible association of milk and its derivatives with cardiovascular risk. Therefore, it became urgent to introduce in the most reliable research data on actual consumption of milk, since most jobs distrusted this consumption data to questionnaires or personal interviews with patients where the recall bias can lead to errors consumption measures.
The main novelty of the study just published by the journal Scientific Reports, the Nature group, lies in the use, in addition to the questionnaires, a biomarker of milk consumption, which provides a more objective data to measure intake.”The use in epidemiological studies of nutritional biomarkers can provide a tool for objective assessment of food consumption and currently is intensifying research to find new biomarkers of intake of different foods,” says Dr. Dolores Corella, researcher CIBERobn.
Genetic biomarkers of food intake are being analyzed single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that, through different mechanisms, determine food intake and are used as indicators of food consumed. Studies using these biomarkers are being incorporated into nutritional research to reduce bias, says the researcher.
In this paper, Professor Oscar Coltell has been responsible for the management, storage and processing of the varied and vast amount of data generated by the study. Among other things, he has performed the meta-analysis with aggregated data from the cohorts included, it has designed the computational methods for the rapid acquisition of data analysis (anthropometric, biochemical, genetic and statistical) has collaborated in the statistical analyzes and has bionformáticas developed techniques for finding new markers identified in the results of genomic analysis broad spectrum performed on blood samples from the participants of the cohorts.
Other recent studies on the same line, such as carried out in Danish population, have been used as a biomarker of milk consumption-rs4988235 polymorphism MCM6. However, although this biomarker is associated very well with milk in populations of northern Europe, it does not work well for people of other origins and it was necessary to deepen the search for better biomarkers for the Mediterranean population and other populations as participants This studio.
In this new research, scientists have described for the first time that a polymorphism in the MCM6 gene (MCM6-rs3754686 SNP), which had already been identified as a marker of lactose tolerance, is strongly associated with milk consumption in European Mediterranean population and population both white and African-American and Hispanic US.”We have shown for the first time an association between rs3754686 SNP-MCM6 and intake of dairy products, specifically milk, in all populations analyzed. Furthermore, in the PREDIMED study of more than 7,000 people of which data are available food consumption each year, this new biomarker was significantly associated with consumption investigated each year dairy, for a period of 5 years, “he explains the researcher.
