Advances in dietary pattern analysis in nutritional epidemiology.

Area of Science:

• Nutritional Epidemiology
• Dietary Pattern Analysis
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• Traditional nutritional epidemiology focused on individual nutrients, foods, or food groups.
• Dietary patterns (DP) analysis accounts for synergistic and interactive effects of consumed foods and nutrients.
• DP analysis methods include hypothesis-based, exploratory, and hybrid approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent conceptual and methodological developments in dietary pattern analysis.
• To outline the uses, strengths, limitations, and scope of novel DP analysis approaches.
• To explore the integration of biological factors and advanced data processing in DP analysis.

Main Methods:

• A narrative review summarizing recent advancements in dietary pattern analysis.
• Inclusion of the Treelet transformation method as a complementary exploratory approach.
• Overview of literature integrating metabolome and gut microbiome data into DP analysis.

Main Results:

• Recent DP analysis developments offer new ways to understand dietary intake.
• Integration of metabolome and gut microbiome data provides a more holistic view of diet-disease relationships.
• Data processing considerations are highlighted, especially for non-food frequency questionnaire data.

Conclusions:

• Biological factors, including the metabolome and microbiome, are essential for understanding diet-disease associations.
• Incorporating these biological factors into DP analysis can yield deeper, more comprehensive insights.
• Future DP analysis holds opportunities for enhanced understanding of diet-health connections.