Health

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HEALTH

The goal of this program is to study the relationship between nutrition, health and diseases. The Program includes research groups whose interest are related to chronic-degenerative diseases (cancer, cardiovascular); metabolic diseases (obesity, diabetes), food intolerance. In these years, by means of innovative and multidisciplinary approaches, N&H improved knowledge on healthy properties of food and dietary factors, contributing to increase the well-being of human population (young, adult, elderly). Further applicative outcomes are expected in both public health and agro-food sectors.

The main areas of research are the following:

1. Epidemiology and population genetics (nutritional and genetic/epigenetic determinants of obesity and related diseases).

2. Nutrition and metabolism (metabolic effects of traditional Mediterranean diet).

3. Chemopreventive mechanisms of phytochemicals.

4. Nutraceuticals and functional foods: pre-clinical and clinical approaches.

5. Immunomorphology

Skills:

  • Human nutrition: survey of eating habits, measurement of energy expenditure, markers of food intake, insulin sensitivity, glucose/lipid metabolism, lipase activity, gut hormones, marker of subclinical inflammation and oxidative stress.
  • Epidemiology: epidemiological, nutritional and genetic investigation on young and adult populations.
  • Public health nutrition
  • Molecular sciences (protein biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, immunology, microbiology, genetics, nutrigenomics) applied to the relationship between nutrition and health.
  • Cell morphology: confocal microscopy, immunohistochemistry, histology.

Key words: epidemiology – public health nutrition – genetics – epigenetics – obesity – metabolism – antioxidant – phytochemicals – cell growth – apoptosis – cancer -nutraceuticals –