Tratamento nutricional do Diabetes Mellitus: foco na Nutrigenômica

Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease that poses many challenges for health professionals and
considerably reduces patients’ life quality. The health system costs to treat patients with this pathology are
exorbitant. Given this scenario, the search for therapies that help in the treatment of this disease is urgent,
and diet therapy has been considered an excellent non-drug alternative for this purpose. In addition to
dietary prescription, which already helps to maintain the rates of diabetic patients and considerably
improves their quality of life, nutritional genomics has been used today, which brings the interaction
between nutrients and bioactive compounds with the genetic material of the patient and thus a better
quality phenotype can be produced and longer life expectancy. Nutritional genomics encompasses
Nutrigenetics and Nutrigenomics, both involving the interaction between gene and nutrient. Therefore, the
individual can have a personalized diet, according to their genetic profile. The great role of these areas is to
help understand the close relationship between the gene and nutrients and other dietary components, as
well as bioactive compounds. Thus, it is possible to relate nutritional genomics to the prevention and/or
treatment of some non-communicable chronic diseases, such as diabetes mellitus. Since diabetes is a disease
that can appear in a very serious way in individuals, its prevention and control have been a constant target
of science and, in this perspective, Nutrigenomics has been shown to be a possible and effective alternative.