Saturday, March 14, 2009

The FDA on DNA-based Health & Nutrition

The FDA not only now recognizes the importance of PERSONALIZED NUTRITION and MEDICINE, it has created the Division of Personalized Nutrition and Medicine.

Quoting from Dr. Jim Kaput's newsletter,
"In October 2006, the FDA/National Center for Toxicological Research in Jefferson, Arkansas, created the Division of Personalized Nutrition and Medicine. This was in my view, a quite remarkable event ˆ the U.S. government not only acknowledging the importance of personalization but including nutrition with medicine. In the summer of this year, I was offered and accepted the position of Director of that new division. The NCTR and FDA announcement written by the NCTR Director (Bill Slikker) is included below. In addition to the information about the new position at NCTR, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (a cabinet level position) published a report in September of this year entitled Personalized Health Care:
Opportunities, Pathways, Resources (for free download, see http://www.hhs.gov/myhealthcare/news/phc-report.pdf).

That report describes the importance and proposed paths to develop personalized health care, and includes discussions about genes and environment (including diet). In addition, the report describes the granting opportunities and resources for research in this area. Although the NIH and other agencies have been slowly increasing funding for nutrient (and environment) ˆ gene interactions, the creation of a research division for personalized nutrition and medicine and the public discussion of personalizing health care demonstrate the recognition of the importance of this type of research."

Dr. Jim Kaput has been a leader in Nutrigenomics at UC Davis and headed the recent conference on Nutrigenomics. Dr. Kaput is very supportive of the interaction of nutrients and genes to say the least.

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