Introducing the nutrition & metabolism section of Journal of Translational Medicine.

Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. Hippocrates (460 BC - 377 BC)

Nutrition experts, as well as specialists of different pathologies, are disclosing an ever increasing interest for protocols devoted to the welfare of patients and to prevention of nutrition related diseases.

In fact, it is extensively acknowledged that nutrition plays a primary role in those complex diseases most widespread in the western countries like cardiovascular disease [1], cancer [2], Alzheimer's disease [3], diabetes [4], nephrolithiasis [5] etc. that account for over 60% of deaths world-wide.

Even in our country, Italy, and in other South Europe's countries, until now protected by the Mediterranean diet, which in 2010 was awarded by UNESCO the human heritage status, the next generation will be the first with a life expectancy lower than of their parents, principally due to unhealthy eating habits and the obesity epidemic.

To counteract this trend, in the last decade attention has been focused on the human nutrition field, with significant research topics being new molecules contrasting cholesterol accumulation in the arterial walls or capable of diminishing visceral fat [6], the role of bacterial microflora [7], the production of functional foods, studies on antioxidant properties of vitamins and polyphenols, etc.

Moreover, beside knowledge acquired with traditional investigation techniques, the field of human nutrition can now avail itself of the new omics techniques that could give a significant contribute to mapping the interactions between genetics, nutrition and health [8].

In the area of Translational Medicine, we believe that the field of nutrition ought to be taken into greater account, as an interaction and mutual validation agency between basic and applied research, in order to generate advanced applications for diagnosis and therapy and to develop at the same time new instruments of investigation.

We here propose a new section devoted to the rapid publication of research papers on all aspects of nutrition with applications in medicine and biotechnology.

This section welcomes contributions that employ traditional clinical, metabolic and epidemiologic methods, but is also open to molecular and cell biology research applied to animal and human nutrition.

Topics include: diet interactions in chronic diseases, gene-environment interactions, genes and cell metabolism, protein and aminoacid metabolism, lipid metabolism and diseases, carbohydrate metabolism and diseases, micronutrients and functional foods.

Other topics relevant to nutrition will be appreciated as well.