Emerging Biomarkers and Determinants of Lipoprotein Profiles to Predict CVD Risk: Implications for Precision Nutrition

Abstract

Biomarkers constitute a valuable tool to diagnose both the incidence and the prevalence of chronic diseases and may help to inform the design and effectiveness of precision nutrition interventions. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) continues to be the foremost cause of death all over the world. While the reasons that lead to increased risk for CVD are multifactorial, dyslipidemias, plasma concentrations of specific lipoproteins, and dynamic measures of lipoprotein function are strong biomarkers to predict and document coronary heart disease incidence. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the biomarkers and emerging approaches that can be utilized to characterize lipoprotein profiles as predictive tools for assessing CVD risk, including the assessment of traditional clinical lipid panels, measures of lipoprotein efflux capacity and inflammatory and antioxidant activity, and omics-based characterization of lipoprotein composition and regulators of lipoprotein metabolism. In addition, we discuss demographic, genetic, metagenomic, and lifestyle determinants of lipoprotein profiles—such as age, sex, gene variants and single-nucleotide polymorphisms, gut microbiome profiles, dietary patterns, physical inactivity, obesity status, smoking and alcohol intake, and stress—which are likely to be essential factors to explain interindividual responses to precision nutrition recommendations to mitigate CVD risk.