Future Clinical Applications
Brenda Davy, PhD, is a registered dietitian and professor in the Department of Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise at Virginia Tech. She conducts research investigating the role of diet in the prevention and treatment of obesity and related conditions such as type 2 diabetes. She also develops dietary assessment methods. More than a decade ago, she developed one of the first rapid assessment tools for quantifying beverage intake — the Beverage Intake Questionnaire — an assessment that is still used today.
“Dietary assessment is necessary in both research and clinical settings,” Davy said. “If a physician diagnoses a patient with a certain condition, information about the patient’s usual dietary habits can help him or her prescribe dietary changes that may help treat that condition.”
Biospecimens, like fecal and urine samples, can be a safe, accurate way to collect that data, she said. Samples can be obtained easily and noninvasively “in a wide variety of populations such as children or older adults” and in clinical settings.
Davy and her team use David’s technology in their work — in particular, a tool called FoodSeq that applies DNA metabarcoding to human stool to collect information about food taxa consumed. Their two labs are now collaborating on a project investigating how ultraprocessed foods might impact type 2 diabetes risk and cardiovascular health.
There are many directions David’s lab would like to take their research, possibly partnering with epidemiologists on global studies that would help them expand their DNA database and better understand how, for example, climate change may be affecting diet diversity and to learn more about diet across different populations.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.