Health economics of nutrigenomics in weight management

Summary The emerging field of nutritional genomics presents various clinical questions that require further investigations. One of those questions is whether nutrigenomic interventions reduce the cost of illness (COI). Prior to this study, there has been an absence of data evaluating the health economic implications of this new field of research. In this theoretical modeling study, we sought to evaluate the health economics implications of a nutrigenomic product for weight loss. We constructed a nutrigenomic economic model by linking 1) published study data related to the efficacy of a product and/or ingredients, 2) validated clinical assessments that have already been tied to health economics data, and 3) data involving condition prevalence and overall cost of illness. In this theoretical model, we demonstrate that LG839 variant positively reduces the cost of illness at the macroeconomic and microeconomic level based upon a cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis. From this proposed model, we have forecasted the prognostic health economic implications of a nutrigenomic intervention to demonstrate a theoretical model of nutrigenomic economics. This study is hypothesis-generating and should be used in the definition of protocols to prospectively test the health economic benefits of nutrigenomics.