Audio
TRANSCRIPT: Rachel Ballard-Barbash, M.D., discusses preventive agents and the need to find genetic markers for prevention.
We have learned more about the need to perhaps understand better, if one's moving forward, a specific constituent, or nutrient supplement, or food component supplement, that we need probably to better understand its physiologic function in various doses. I mean one of the concerns of course with a number of the Beta-carotene trials is that while we're still seeing protective effects in diet, foods from Beta-carotene, that the supplements seem to not be protective in some instances show adverse affects. Well, that in part may be due to the fact that when these trials were started, people were looking at only one constituent of those foods. Now, the carotinoids that people are looking at are much more diverse, and it's one of the reasons why, you know, people have argued that it's also useful to move forward specific food, in food-based interventions rather then only supplement-based interventions. And I think that probably will continue to be true until we have better information on specific gene nutrient interactions that may influence risk. And so, we need more research in progress in what are the risk groups. And many people believe that in addition to some of these markers of intermediate outcomes like adenomas, etc. that a particular need will be to better identify genetic polymorphic groups in those, and it's that where one looks at very specific nutrients or food or dietary pattern. |