Discovery-Based Nutritional Systems Biology: Developing N-of-1 Nutrigenomic Research
Abstract
The progress in and success of biomedical research over the past century was built on the foundation outlined in R.A. Fishers The Design of Experiments (1935), which described the theory and methodological approach to designing research studies. A key tenet of Fishers treatise, widely adopted by the research community, is randomization, the process of assigning individuals to random groups or treatments. Comparing outcomes or responses between these groups yields risk factors called population attributable risks (PAR), which are statistical estimates of the percentage reduction in disease if the risk were avoided or in the case of genetic associations, if the gene variant were not present in the population.