A new approach to figuring out which diets are pro or anti-inflammatory

UC Science Today

It seems there’s more to high-density lipoproteins, or HDLs, than we previously thought. Nutrition researcher Angela Zivkovic of the University of California, Davis, led an analyses of how the composition of complex sugars attached to HDLs called glycans are linked to the body’s inflammatory response. Traditional markers like LDL cholesterol, body mass index and blood pressure are not able to predict whose HDL is pro- or anti-inflammatory. "That’s something that had not really been looked at very extensively before. So, how can we actually start to look at people to see what their metabolic phenotype might be like that’s something other than how we’ve categorized them so far?” Being a nutrition researcher, Zivkovic is looking into which diets are pro- or anti-inflammatory. "I think we can actually start to think about the possibility of giving people recommendations to improve their health that take into account both who they are as genetically, but also what they choose."