Nutritional aspects of metabolic inflammation in relation to health—insights from transcriptomic biomarkers in PBMC of fatty acids and polyphenols

Recent research has highlighted potential important interaction between metabolism and inflammation, within the context of metabolic health and nutrition, with a view to preventing diet‐related disease. In addition to this, there is a paucity of evidence in relation to accurate biomarkers that are capable of reflecting this important biological interplay or relationship between metabolism and inflammation, particularly in relation to diet and health. Therefore the objective of this review is to highlight the potential role of transcriptomic approaches as a tool to capture the mechanistic basis of metabolic inflammation. Within this context, this review has focused on the potential of peripheral blood mononuclear cells transcriptomic biomarkers, because they are an accessible tissue that may reflect metabolism and subacute chronic inflammation. Also these pathways are often dysregulated in the common diet‐related diseases obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease, thus may be used as markers of systemic health. The review focuses on fatty acids and polyphenols, two classes of nutrients/nonnutrient food components that modulate metabolism/inflammation, which we have used as an example of a proof‐of‐concept with a view to understanding the extent to which transcriptomic biomarkers are related to nutritional status and/or sensitive to dietary interventions. We show that both nutritional components modulate inflammatory markers at the transcriptomic level with the capability of profiling pro‐ and anti‐inflammatory mechanisms in a bidirectional fashion; to this end transcriptomic biomarkers may have potential within the context of metabolic inflammation. This transcriptomic biomarker approach may be a sensitive indicator of nutritional status and metabolic health.