A perspective on diet, epigenetics and complex diseases: where is the field headed next?

Abstract

Dietary factors can regulate epigenetic processes during life, modulating the intracellular pools of metabolites necessary for epigenetic reactions and regulating the activity of epigenetic enzymes. Their effects are strong during the prenatal life, when epigenetic patterns are written, allowing organogenesis. However, interactions between diet and the epigenome continue throughout life and likely contribute to the onset and progression of various complex diseases. Here, we review the contribution of dietary factors to the epigenetic changes observed in complex diseases and suggest future steps to better address this issue, focusing on neurobehavioral, neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, cardiovascular diseases, obesity and Type 2 diabetes, cancer and inflammatory skin diseases.

Keywords::

• cancer
• cardiovascular diseases
• diet
• epigenetics
• inflammatory skin diseases
• neurobehavioral disorders
• neurodegenerative diseases
• obesity and Type 2 diabetes

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was performed on behalf of the ‘Epigenetics’ working group of the Italian Society of Human Genetics, to whom most authors belong. M Franzago was supported by Fondazione Umberto Veronesi. R Tricarico was supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant no. 896865 from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. G Matullo was supported by a grant to the Department of Medical Sciences, Turin University, by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca–MIUR) under the program ‘Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2018–2022’ project D15D18000410001. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Editorial Board disclosure

F Coppedè is a member of the Epigenomics Editorial Board. He was not involved in any editorial decisions related to the publication of this article, and all author details were blinded to the article’s peer reviewers as per the journal’s double-blind peer review policy.