Several recent studies have found signs of recent selection on the carnitine palmitoyl-transferase 1A (CPT1A) gene in the ancestors of Arctic populations likely as a result of their traditional diet. Researchers aimed to assess which fatty acids may have driven the selection of rs80356779, a c.1436C>T (p.(Pro479Leu)) variant in CPT1A, by analysing a potential interaction between the variant and traditional diet.
Publications
The latest list of publications from the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre with a brief summary.
If you are publishing research which has had funding and / or support from the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, please complete this form.
View publicationPublication: The Lancet
Treweek S, Forouhi N, Narayan K, Khunti K.
12 June 2020
Summary
The toll of COVID-19 is not equal. Evidence globally shows a greater COVID-19 burden with older age, male sex, obesity, comorbidities, and poverty.
Early data suggest that people from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) groups in the UK and Black, Hispanic, and Native American groups in the USA are disproportionately at risk of severe COVID-19 complications and deaths. A recent systematic review of published, preprint, and grey literature concluded that BAME communities are at increased risk of infection from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and have more adverse outcomes, including death.
View publicationPublication: European Journal of Human Genetics
Senftleber N, Jørgensen M, Jørsboe E, Imamura F, Forouhi N, Larsen C et al.
19 June 2020
Summary
View publication
Publication: PLOS Medicine
Atabaki-Pasdar N, Ohlsson M, Viñuela A, Frau F, Pomares-Millan H, Haid M et al.
19 June 2020
Summary
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is highly prevalent and causes serious health complications in individuals with and without type 2 diabetes (T2D). Early diagnosis of NAFLD is important, as this can help prevent irreversible damage to the liver and, ultimately, hepatocellular carcinomas. Researchers sought to expand etiological understanding and develop a diagnostic tool for NAFLD using machine learning.
Publication: The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
Sieri S, Agnoli C, Grioni S, Weiderpass E, Mattiello A, Sluijs I et al.
03 July 2020
Summary
Publication: PLOS Medicine
Imamura F, Fretts A, Marklund M, Ardisson Korat A, Yang W, Lankinen M et al.
12 June 2020
Summary
De novo lipogenesis (DNL) is the primary metabolic pathway synthesizing fatty acids from carbohydrates, protein, or alcohol. Researchers examined associations of in vivo levels of selected fatty acids in DNL with incidence of type 2 diabetes (T2D).
Publication: Nutrients
Laura C. Kusinski, Helen R. Murphy, Emanuella De Lucia Rolfe, Kirsten L. Rennie, Linda M. Oude Griep, Deborah Hughes, Roy Taylor, Claire L. Meek
22 April 2020
Summary
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) annually affects 35,000 pregnancies in the United Kingdom, causing suboptimal health outcomes to the mother and child. Obesity and excessive gestational weight gain are risk factors for GDM
Publication: European Journal of Nutrition
Eloranta A, Sallinen T, Viitasalo A, Lintu N, Väistö J, Jalkanen H et al.
4 May 2020
Summary
Researchers studied the effects of a physical activity and dietary intervention on plasma lipids in a general population of children. Researchers also investigated how lifestyle changes contributed to the intervention effects.
View publicationPublication: European Journal of Nutrition
Eleanor M. Winpenny, Esther M. F. van Sluijs, Nita G. Forouhi
13 May 2020
Summary
Poor diet quality is one of the key contributors to poor cardiovascular health and associated morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to assess how the short-term associations between diet quality and metabolic risk factors change with age.
View publicationPublication: Clinical Nutrition
Ghadeer S. Aljuraiban,Kamalita Pertiwi, Jeremiah Stamler, Queenie Chan, Johanna M. Geleijnse, Linda Van Horn, Martha L. Daviglus, Paul Elliott, Linda M. Oude Griep
22 January 2020
Summary
Previous studies have reported associations between higher potato intake and higher blood pressure (BP) and/or risk of hypertension and obesity. These studies rarely considered preparation methods of potatoes, overall dietary pattern or the nutrient quality of the meals. These factors may affect the association of potato intake with BP and body mass index (BMI). This study investigated potato consumption by amount, type of processing, overall dietary pattern, and nutrient quality of the meals in relation to BP and BMI.
View publicationPublication: Clinical Biochemistry
Paquette M, Gauthier D, Chamberland A, Prat A, De Lucia Rolfe E, Rasmussen J et al.
March 2020
Summary
The objective of this study is to investigate the association between circulating PCSK9 levels and the presence of hepatic steatosis, as well as with liver biomarkers in a cohort of healthy individuals.
View publicationPublication: International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
Matthew Pearce, Tessa Strain, Youngwon Kim, Stephen J. Sharp, Kate Westgate, Katrien Wijndaele, Tomas Gonzales, Nicholas J. Wareham & Søren Brage
16 March 2020
Summary
Higher levels of physical activity have been shown to be associated with a lower risk of morbidity and mortality, but accurately assessing the dose of physical activity in large population studies remains challenging The baseline questionnaire includes items adapted from the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) [6] and the Recent Physical Activity Questionnaire (RPAQ).
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Publication: Nutrients
Birdem Amoutzopoulos, Toni Steer, Caireen Roberts, David Collins, Polly Page
1 February 2020
Summary
Monitoring dietary intake of sugars in the population’s diet has great importance in evaluating the efficiency of national sugar reduction programmes. The study objective was to provide a comprehensive assessment of dietary sources of added and free sugars to assess adherence to public health recommendations in the UK population and to consider the impact of different sugar definitions on monitoring.
View publicationPublication: European Heart Journal
SCORE2 working group and ESC Cardiovascular risk collaboration
13 June 2021
Summary
The researchers analysed data from nearly 700,000 mainly middle-aged participants in 45 large-scale studies to develop risk prediction models (SCORE2) tailored for use in European countries.
The participants did not have previous history of CVD at the outset and 30,000 had a CVD event (heart attack or stroke) during the first 10 years of follow up.
These risk models were then statistically adapted or ‘recalibrated’ to more accurately estimate CVD risk for contemporary populations in four European risk regions, using data on population-specific CVD incidence rates and risk factor values from 10.8 million individuals. Read the full story
View publicationPublication: BMJ Open
Ioannis Bakolis Robert Stewart,David Baldwin, Jane Beenstock, Paul Bibby, Matthew Broadbent, Rudolf Cardinal, Shanquan Chen, Karthik Chinnasamy, Andrea Cipriani, Simon Douglas, Philip Horner, Caroline A Jackson, Ann John, Dan W Joyce, Sze Chim Lee, Jonathan Lewis, Andrew McIntosh, Neil Nixon, David Osborn, Peter Phiri, Shanaya Rathod, Tanya Smith, Rachel Sokal, Rob Waller, Sabine Landau
26 May 21
Summary
To investigate changes in daily mental health (MH) service use and mortality in response to the introduction and the lifting of the COVID-19 ‘lockdown’ policy in Spring 2020. Data was reviewed looking at lockdown policy, changes and admissions, with findings of sizeable changes during the first national lockdown, but still unclear what the effect is.
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Publication: Sage Journals
Maria Herrero-Zazo, Rachel Berry, Emma Bines, Debi Bhattacharya, Phyo K. Myint, Victoria L. Keevil
6 May 2021
Summary
Researchers describe how commonly medicines which block the chemical acetylcholine are prescribed to older adults admitted to hospital as an emergency and explore links between these medicines and death during or soon after hospital admission. Researchers use data collected as part of routine medical care at one university hospital to describe how often these medicines are prescribed in a large sample of older adults admitted to hospital as an emergency. They looked at the medicines patients are prescribed on admission to the hospital and also when they are later discharged.
Publication: Diabetes Care
Frank Qian Andres V. Ardisson Korat Fumiaki Imamura, Matti Marklund, Nathan Tintle, Jyrki K. Virtanen, Xia Zhou, Julie K. Bassett, Heidi Lai, Yoichiro Hirakawa, Kuo-Liong Chien, Alexis C. Wood, Maria Lankinen, Rachel A. Murphy, Cecilia Samieri, Kamalita Pertiwi, Vanessa D. de Mello, Weihua Guan, Nita G. Forouhi, Nick Wareham, Frank B. Hu, Ulf Riserus, Lars Lind, William S. Harris, Aladdin H. Shadyab, Jennifer G. Robinson, Lyn M. Steffen, Allison Hodge, Graham G. Giles, Toshiharu Ninomiya, Matti Uusitupa, Jaakko Tuomilehto, Jaana Lindström, Markku Laakso, David S. Siscovick, Catherine Helmer, Johanna M. Geleijnse, Jason H.Y. Wu, Amanda Fretts, Rozenn N. Lemaitre, Renata Micha , Dariush Mozaffarian and Qi Sun
May 2021
Summary
Prospective associations between n-3 fatty acid biomarkers and type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk are not consistent in individual studies. We aimed to summarize the prospective associations of biomarkers of α-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), docosapentaenoic acid (DPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) with T2D risk through an individual participant-level pooled analysis.
View publicationPublication: Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
Winters-van Eekelen, Esther van der Velde, Jeroen H.P.M. Boone, Sebastiaan C.; Westgate, Kate; Brage, Søren, Lamb, Hildo J, Rosendaal, Frits R. de Mutsert, Renée1
28 May 2021
Summary
It remains unclear to what extent habitual physical activity and sedentary time are associated with visceral fat and liver fat.
Researchers studied substitution of sedentary time with time spent physically active and total body fat (TBF), visceral adipose tissue (VAT) and hepatic triglyceride content (HTGC) in middle-aged men and women.
Reallocation of time spent sedentary with time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, but not light physical activity, was associated with less total body fat, and visceral and liver fat. These findings contribute to the development of more specified guidelines on sedentary time and physical activity.
View publicationPublication: Nature Medicine
Kaitlin H. Wade, Brian Y. H. Lam, Audrey Melvin, Warren Pan, Laura J. Corbin, David A. Hughes, Kara Rainbow, Jian-Hua Chen, Katie Duckett, Xiaoming Liu, Jacek Mokrosiński, Alexander Mörseburg, Sam Neaves, Alice Williamson, Chen Zhang, I. Sadaf Farooqi, Giles S. H. Yeo, Nicholas J. Timpson & Stephen O’Rahilly
27 May 2021
Summary
Could a gene be the key why some of us carry extra fat? New research has found that one in every 340 people might carry a mutation in a single gene that makes them more likely to have a greater weight from early childhood and, by 18 years of age, they could be up to 30 pounds heavier with the excess weight likely to be mostly fat. Read the full story
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Publication: Nature Cancer
Xueqing Zou, Gene Ching Chiek Koh, Arjun Scott Nanda, Andrea Degasperi, Katie Urgo, Theodoros I. Roumeliotis, Chukwuma A. Agu, Cherif Badja, Sophie Momen, Jamie Young, Tauanne Dias Amarante, Lucy Side, Glen Brice, Vanesa Perez-Alonso, Daniel Rueda, Celine Gomez, Wendy Bushell, Rebecca Harris, Jyoti S. Choudhary, Genomics England Research Consortium, Josef Jiricny, William C. Skarnes & Serena Nik-Zainal
26 April 2021
Summary
A new way to identify tumours that could be sensitive to particular immunotherapies has been developed using data from thousands of NHS cancer patient samples sequenced through the 100,000 Genomes Project. The MMRDetect clinical algorithm makes it possible to identify tumours that have ‘mismatch repair deficiencies’ and then improve the personalisation of cancer therapies to exploit those weaknesses.
View publicationPublication: Nature Communications
Sungsam Gong, Francesca Gaccioli, Justyna Dopierala, Ulla Sovio, Emma Cook, Pieter-Jan Volders, Lennart Martens, Paul D. W. Kirk, Sylvia Richardson, Gordon C. S. Smith & D. Stephen Charnock-Jones
11 May 2021
Summary
The placenta is understudied and is commonly omitted from large-scale “-omic” analyses, this study enables tissue-wide comparison of transcriptome analyses, looking at identification placentally-related adverse pregnancy outcomes such as fetal growth restriction (FGR) and preeclimisia (PE).
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