Gene expression profile of peripheral blood cells (PBC) is able to reflect useful aspects of the whole body metabolic status. Therefore, and favored by the huge development of “omic” technologies, blood cells and, particularly, the peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) fraction, are emerging as a potent source of transcriptomic biomarkers of health and disease. In this review we describe and discuss the available information concerning the use of the PBC and the PBMC fraction as a crucial tool for nutrigenomic studies. Results of these studies reveal, as these cells are good indicators of metabolic adaptations to diet and, moreover, as they allow us to monitor from early stages on, the metabolic alterations associated with dietary imbalances. In this way, blood cells present the capacity of reflecting higher risks of suffering from diet‐related pathologies, such as obesity and its medical complications. What is more, different studies also show how PBMC are able to evidence the metabolic recovery associated with weight loss or dietary interventions. Besides, recent research points to the utility of ex vivo systems of blood cells to test the efficacy of food bioactives. All in all, PBC constitutes an easily obtainable source of predictive biomarkers of metabolic imbalance and disease related to diet and obesity, and also of metabolic recovery, which appears as highly relevant for developing nutritional preventive strategies in dietetics. Moreover, they could serve to perform relatively simple and economic in vitro tests to assess food bioactive compounds, promoting in this way functional food research and related industry developments.

中文翻译：

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外周血细胞，营养基因组学和肥胖症研究中的转录组工具：最新技术

外周血细胞（PBC）的基因表达谱能够反映出全身代谢状态的有用方面。因此，在“组学”技术的巨大发展的支持下，血细胞，尤其是外周血单核细胞（PBMC）部分，正在成为健康和疾病转录组生物标志物的有效来源。在这篇综述中，我们描述和讨论了有关将PBC和PBMC馏分用作营养学研究的重要工具的可用信息。这些研究的结果表明，这些细胞是代谢适应饮食的良好指标，此外，由于它们使我们能够从早期开始监测与饮食失衡有关的代谢变化。通过这种方式，血细胞具有反映患饮食相关疾病（例如肥胖症及其医疗并发症）的较高风险的能力。此外，不同的研究还表明，PBMC如何能够证明与体重减轻或饮食干预相关的代谢恢复。此外，最近的研究指出离体血细胞系统，以测试食品生物活性物质的功效。总而言之，PBC构成了与饮食和肥胖有关的代谢失衡和疾病以及代谢恢复的预测性生物标志物的容易获得的标志物，这似乎与制定饮食学中的营养预防策略高度相关。此外，它们可以用于执行相对简单且经济的体外测试，以评估食品中的生物活性化合物，从而以这种方式促进功能性食品研究和相关行业的发展。