The National Institutes of Health has undertaken a new program to discover, develop and distribute measures of nutritional status. The Biomarkers of Nutrition for Development (BOND) Program seeks to identify nutritional biomarkers-substances that indicate how much of a nutrient a person has eaten and how the body is using that nutrient.
Such biomarkers may be used to gauge:
- how much of the nutrient someone has eaten (nutrient exposure)
- whether the person is deficient, adequate, or has too much of a nutrient (status)
- the role a nutrient serves in the body (function)
- how a person or group responds to a treatment or intervention (effect)
Biomarkers may be direct measures of substances found in the body, such as a protein in the blood, or a substitute measure, such as height or bone density, which indicates a nutrient's effect. Biomarkers can be used to assess the nutritional status of a person or a population.
The BOND Program is a partnership (involving the NIH and support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, European Micronutrient Recommendations Aligned, the Micronutrient Genomics Project and PepsiCo. The BOND Program also involves collaborations with several U.S. and global health agencies and private organizations.
The program has two main tracks. One track will provide advice on biomarkers, based on the available scientific evidence. The BOND program will support teams of experts who will review the scientific studies on current nutritional biomarkers. Their reviews will form the basis of advice about the most appropriate biomarkers for assessing particular nutrients. Moreover, their advice will be tailored to the needs of specific users, such as health care workers, researchers, or officials developing programs to correct nutritional problems in a community or nation. This advice will be available on the NICHD's website, through an interactive database that users can search to find information that best meets their needs.
The other main track will support researchers working to identify additional nutritional biomarkers and how best to use them.
The initial group of micronutrients that will be covered by the BOND Program include folic acid, iodine, iron, vitamin A, vitamin B12, and zinc.