The increased life expectancy and the expansion of the elderly population are stimulating
research into aging. Aging may be viewed as a multifactorial process that results from the
interaction of genetic and environmental factors, which include lifestyle. Human molecular processes
are influenced by physiological pathways as well as exogenous factors, which include the diet.
Dietary components have substantive effects on metabolic health; for instance, bioactive molecules
capable of selectively modulating specific metabolic pathways affect the development/progression
of cardiovascular and neoplastic disease. As bioactive nutrients are increasingly identified, their
clinical and molecular chemopreventive effects are being characterized and systematic analyses
encompassing the “omics” technologies (transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) are being
conducted to explore their action. The evolving field of molecular pathological epidemiology has
unique strength to investigate the effects of dietary and lifestyle exposure on clinical outcomes.
The mounting body of knowledge regarding diet-related health status and disease risk is expected
to lead in the near future to the development of improved diagnostic procedures and therapeutic
strategies targeting processes relevant to nutrition. The state of the art of aging and nutrigenomics
research and the molecular mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of bioactive nutrients on themain aging-related disorders are reviewed herein.
