Nutrigenomic Approaches to Understanding the Transcriptional and Metabolic Responses of Phytochemicals to Diet-Induced Obesity and its Complications

Obesity and its related complication have emerged as global health problems and nutritional factors play important roles in the etiology of obesity and its complications. In the past decade, and with the developing fields of nutrigenomic using high-throughput "omics" technologies, strong evidence has supported an essential role of dietary components/functional nutrients as promising complimentary agents that are useful in preventing or mitigating obesity and its complication. Although nutraceutical intervention produce a more subtle effect than a pharmaceutical agent, it is safer than pharmaceutical approaches; there are a number of safety concerns surrounding such pharmaceutical approaches. Therefore, the objective of this review is to highlight the potential role of nutrigenomic approaches as a tool to capture the mechanistic basis of obesity and its complications through which dietary component/functional nutrients (phytochemicals) may be beneficial for metabolic diseases.