Page 59 - Demo

UWI SODECO
59
4. There is growing recognition that the risk of obesity and its associated diseases is amplified by under-nutrition in early life, sometimes beginning in utero, as well as going back several generations.
5. Intergenerational under-nutrition affects approximately 40% of the global population and rests heavily on sub-Saharan Africa, rural India and China, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
6. Left unattended, the burden of disease will rise exponentially, and its effects on m morbidity, individuals’ ability to work, and interruption of investment in children in families will retard economic development at country level.
7. There has been a global response at national and UN levels along two main tracks. First, public health interventions have been designed to prevent disease, and second, health system responses to assure better, more efficient management of disease recommended. However, despite ramped-up efforts, the epidemic continues virtually unabated, especially in developing countries.
8. Therefore, awareness has arisen for the need for game changers, and many institutions are focused on this issue.
9. UWI SODECO’s approach makes the assumption that knowledge of the underlying molecular mechanisms that drive the obesity and chronic disease responses to increases in availability of food and reduction in activity levels, especially in inter generationally undernourished peoples, is a pre-requisite to identifying game-changing prevention and cure strategies. 10. UWI SODECO, through its global network, is tasked to devise one specific scientific approach to the problem: to use cutting edge technologies to search for, and find underlying molecular mechanisms of amplified risk existing in previously undernourished populations, and to use this knowledge to guide the crafting of novel interventions for prevention and treatment. 11. The combination of infrastructure, as described, and research grants in hand extending through December 2016 has enabled thought leadership from Jamaica in the area of the interaction of malnutrition, developmental biology, and risk of obesity and associated diseases to combine with other expertise in the network nodes to tackle this problem.
Research deliverables
When this set of current projects is complete in December 2016, we would have described:
i). the molecular pathways that underpin both the heightened risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease resulting from intergenerational malnutrition; and
ii). those pathways in muscle that respond to exercise to reverse the increase in risk of cardiovascular disease resulting from stroke, the preeminent complication of obesity and its comorbidities.
Current research support
1. Modelling the epidemiologic transition: Energy expenditure, obesity and diabetes.
Our objectives are to examine whether an individual’s amount of activity energy expenditure (AEE) is related to adiposity and adiposity/diabetes-related hormones in a diverse sample of 2500, and to test the ecological hypothesis that a decline in levels of AEE is an important cause of the increases in obesity that are currently taking place in many societies. Our aim is to use doubly labelled water and/or accelerometers to objectively measure activity energy expenditure in community samples from five adult populations across the spectrum of obesity risk. From each site, that is, Nigeria, South Africa, Seychelles, Jamaica and the US, 500 Black adults will be recruited.
Role: CO-PI
Source/Agency NIH
Type: 1R01 DK 080763; Period 04/01/09 – 03/31/16
2. Determinants and consequences of low vitamin D in populations of African descent.
The objectives are to leverage the ecologic contrasts across five (5) populations of African origin with differing exposures to sunlight, to explore associations between vitamin D metabolism and obesity and co-morbidities.
Role: Co-Investigator
Source/Agency: NIH/
Type: 5RO1DK090360-03: Period 07/01/2013 – 06/30/2017
3. Effects of early exercise on muscle and cardiovascular health after stroke
The objectives are to determine whether starting exercise in the sub-acute period after stroke prevents or reduces muscle atrophy and the attendant increased cardiovascular risk. Additionally, to determine the changes in muscle synthesis/ breakdown in order to better understand the drivers of atrophy and regeneration post exercise.
Role: CO-PI
Source/Agency: NIH
Type: 1 R01 HD068712-01; Period 04/01/11 – 03/31/16
4. Epigenetic mechanisms, stunting and poor growth; targets for interventions
74
Recognising Outstanding Researchers 2016