[Current Status of Health Foods Including Their Interactions with Drugs and Adverse Events]

Drug-food Interactions in the Era of Molecular Big Data, Machine Intelligence, and Personalized Health

The drug-food interaction brings forth changes in the clinical effects of drugs. While favourable interactions bring positive clinical outcomes, unfavourable interactions may lead to toxicity. This article reviews the impact of food intake on drug-food interactions, the clinical effects of drugs, and the effect of drug-food in correlation with diet and precision medicine. Emerging areas in drug-food interactions are the food-genome interface (nutrigenomics) and nutrigenetics. Understanding the molecular basis of food ingredients, including genomic sequencing and pharmacological implications of food molecules, helps to reduce the impact of drug-food interactions. Various strategies are being leveraged to alleviate drug-food interactions; measures including patient engagement, digital health, approaches involving machine intelligence, and big data are a few of them. Furthermore, delineating the molecular communications across dietmicrobiome- drug-food-drug interactions in a pharmacomicrobiome framework may also play a vital role in personalized nutrition. Determining nutrient-gene interactions aids in making nutrition deeply personalized and helps mitigate unwanted drug-food interactions, chronic diseases, and adverse events from their onset. Translational bioinformatics approaches could play an essential role in the next generation of drug-food interaction research. In this landscape review, we discuss important tools, databases, and approaches along with key challenges and opportunities in drug-food interaction and its immediate impact on precision medicine.

Association of Retinol and Carotenoids Content in Diet and Serum With Risk for Colorectal Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

Background

Colorectal cancer (CRC) risk is linked to serum and dietary retinol and carotenoids, according to clinical and epidemiological research. However, the findings are not consistent. As a result, we did this meta-analysis to determine the link between them.

Methods

From 2000 through 2022, the PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases, as well as pertinent article references, were searched and filtered based on inclusion and exclusion criteria and literature quality ratings. High and low intake were used as controls, and OR (odds ratio) or RR (relative risk) and 95% confidence interval were extracted. The extracted data were plotted and analyzed using Stata12.0 software.

Results

A total of 22 relevant studies were included, including 18 studies related to diet and 4 studies related to serum. For high and low intake or concentration controls, the pooled OR was as follows: β-carotene (OR = 0.89, 95% CI: 0.78–1.03), α-carotene (OR = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.72–1.03), lycopene (OR = 0.93, 95% CI: 0.81–1.07), lutein/zeaxanthin (OR = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.87–1.07), β-cryptoxanthin (OR = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.48–1.01), total carotenoids (OR = 0.97, 95% CI: 0.81–1.15), retinol (OR = 0.99, 95% CI: 0.89–1.10), serum carotenoids (OR = 0.73, 95% CI: 0.58–0.93), serum retinol (OR = 0.62, 95% CI: 0.26–1.49). Subgroup analysis was performed according to tumor type, study type and sex.

Conclusion

Total carotenoid intake and Lutein/Zeaxanthin intake were not associated with CRC risk. High β-carotene, α-carotene, lycopene, and β-cryptoxanthin all tended to reduce CRC risk. Serum carotenoid concentrations were significantly inversely associated with CRC risk.

Determination of the Awareness about and Need for Health Support Pharmacies as the Provider of Consultation Service about Nutrition Education and Diet-Related Health Promotion by Health Professionals in Japan

Health support pharmacies (HSPs) have been established as a new category of pharmacies in Japan. In addition to prescriptions, HSPs provide several health services, including consultations on diet/nutrition, health foods, and nursing care. Therefore, not only individuals receiving medications but also community residents should have access to HSPs. However, it is unclear whether people are aware of HSPs. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the awareness about HSPs and determine the need for their services. To this end, we conducted an online cross-sectional questionnaire survey in 10,000 Japanese adults. Approximately 60.2% of the participants were aware of family pharmacies/pharmacists, and 21.8% of these participants had a family pharmacy/pharmacist. Meanwhile, 2.6% of the participants were aware of HSPs, while 9.2% of the participants had only heard of HSPs. Awareness of HSPs was higher among men and younger individuals than among women and older generations. In addition, only 7.2% of the participants were aware of the location of the HSP in their area of residence. At the time at which this survey was conducted, only 3.5% of the participants were using HSP services, and half of them did not perceive the merits of using these services. However, 44.4% of the participants wished to avail themselves of HSP services in the future, and this desire increased with age. Half of the participants wished to use services that were associated with drugs, and the need for other services, such as consultations on diet/nutrition or health foods, was low. In conclusion, there was low awareness about HSPs among the survey participants. However, from our findings, we gathered that if individuals are aware of HSPs, they will wish to use HSP services. To improve healthy life expectancy, it is important to increase awareness about HSPs and their number.