A Novel Bioengineering Clinical Device Testing Cellular Homeostatic Potentials to Customize and Monitor Nutritional-Related Age-Management Interventional Strategies

Introduction

M etabolic syndrome is present in about 50% of elderly people and it is associated with dyslipidemia, hypertension, insulin resistance, and visceral adiposity. The higher the number of these risk factors, the greater the chance of developing heart disease, diabetes, or stroke. In general, a person with metabolic syndrome is twice as likely to develop heart disease and five times as likely to develop diabetes as someone without metabolic syndrome. There is solid scientific evidence pointing out how such a pathological condition is quickly increasing, especially among young people. Accordingly, there is ever increasing evidence linking body composition abnormalities with a biological cascade of proinflammatory cellular events, eventually leading, mostly causatively but also epiphenomenically, to the onset of a large part of chronic degenerative diseases. However, most clinically applicable devices assessing body composition harbor a number of drawbacks and hardly assess the phenomena taking place at a cellular membrane levelin an objective manner. This holds particular relevance when considering that nutritional/nutraceuticals issues involved in any tentative prevention strategy are known to be the most important environmental epigenomic modifiers and these are primarily affected by cell membrane potential.

The rationale of our research study was to test the ability to restore the balance of cellular potentials through specific nutritional, nutraceutical, and pre/prebiotics effectively modifying gut ecology and eventually cellular homeostatis overall. Although there is an abundant array of reliable biomarkers related to this condition, the same does not apply to body composition analytical methods, where a number of drawbacks still exist. ^1,2 Among such methodologies, bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) has widespread popularity for its easy availability and practical feasibility. The principle of BIA is the application of an alternate sinusoidal current to a human body generating two different feedbacks, i.e., one related to intra/extracellular fluid masses (resistance) and another referred to electric potential-endowed cell membranes (reactive conductors). ^{3 –7} To reach the two feedbacks, we had to assess and verify the reliability of such predictive analysis as well as the status of phase-angle value when measured in single-frequency bioeletrical impedance analysis (SFBIA) as compared to multifrequency bioeletrical impedance analysis (MFBIA) under specific nutritional challenges. ^8,9

Materials and Methods

Results

In-house data amounting to over a thousands of patients, in particular 100 diabetics, 100 dyslipidemics, and 100 overweight people, analyzed in a double-blind fashion showed a very significant correlation between the data obtained by the dietary questionnaire (reproduced in a fractal-like graph, upper part of Fig. 1) and the sectorial functional body compartments analysis obtained by PHoSA methodology (lower part of Fig. 1) (p < 0.05). When these patients' dietary habits were designed under tailored nutritional-nutraceutical modification as guided by PHoSA analysis, the subsequent follow-up results were significantly mirrored by the related specific functional masses and water distribution modification, unlike routine body mass index (BMI) or conventional body composition scales employed as comparison.

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FIG. 1.

Dietary pattern membrane potential analysis interrelationship. (A) Diagram showing three different dietary patterns as examined by a specific questionnaire. (B) Outlook of the above three cases as appearing on an analysis potential homeostatic structure.

Discussion

The novel concept of the methodology devised by Rilevo Bioengineering Lab is based on the targeted analysis of homeostatic balances and their inner structural components. The PHoSA analyzer shortens operating and computing time while offering the analysis of a number of lifestyle and dietary habits (foods components, water distribution, exercise). This information will help in customizing a proper nutritional intervention plan endowed with specific quali-quantitative integrations tailored by the counterpart of individual cellular unbalances tested. Taken overall, the results so far obtained by robust in-house clinical observations lead us to suggest that the present methodology is highly reproducible, with virtually no intraindividual and interobserver variation whatsoever, while finely mirroring basic cellular physiologic status and variation due to dietary habits and interventions. Thus, the assessment provided by this novel dynamic device may prove to be an integrated part of a diagnostic workup and, most importantly, a monitoring tool in tailoring nutritional/nutraceutical, pharmacological, and exercise activity, all being framed within a proactive preventive age-intervention management strategy.