GRANTS. Degradation products in the body that affect the risk of developing diabetes, how preschools should be built so that the sound environment is as good as possible for the children, how health of the residents of Ronneby has been affected by contaminated drinking water and how the interaction between the food we eat and bacteria in the intestines affects the risk of developing liver disease. That is what five researchers from the Institute of Medicine are going to study with funding from Formas.
They are Fredrik Bäckhed, Kerstin Persson Waye, Tony Fletcher, Kristina Jakobsson and Robert Caesar, who together are receiving nearly SEK 15 million dollars from the government research funding body known as Formas, the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning. The Research Council has an annual open call for proposals, and its decision is announced in November.
Fredrik Bäckhed, professor of molecular medicine at the Wallenberg Laboratory, will receive a total of nearly SEK 4.4 million for his project, which is about how the emergence of diabetic metabolites can be prevented through dietary interventions in various ethnic groups.
Increasing numbers of people are becoming obese, which depends not only on what we eat and how much we move around, but also on our intestinal flora. Bacteria in the intestines complement our own genetic makeup with a thousand times more genes than we have in our own genetic makeup.
In this project Frederick and his colleagues will investigate how diet interacts with intestinal flora in different groups of people with different nationalities. They will primarily focus on how the intestinal flora processes proteins and how the substances that can contribute to the development of diabetes come into being. Recently the research team has demonstrated that such a metabolite can directly influence sugar metabolism and insulin sensitivity. Understanding which bacteria produce such metabolites may offer new treatment methods and pave the way for personal dietary advice based on intestinal flora.
Robert Caesar, associate professor of molecular medicine at the Wallenberg Laboratory, will receive slightly more than SEK 2.2 million for his project, which will identify how the molecular interaction between fat in the diet and intestinal flora affects the development of fatty liver disease when alcohol consumption is not a factor.
Bacteria in the intestines interact with substances in our food, such as various fats, and can thus influence the development of obesity and metabolic disorders. A diet with a high proportion of saturated fat may contribute to obesity, fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, while a diet with a high proportion of unsaturated fat is considered to have positive effects on health.
The project concerns non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a common liver disease associated with overweight and a high-fat diet. By studying several groups of patients with different metabolic complications and healthy subjects, Robert Caesar and his colleagues have managed to find correlations between the composition of intestinal flora and physiological parameters that are relevant for the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The studies suggest that a high-fat diet alters the metabolism of bile acids and fats and degrades the composition and functioning of intestinal flora, which, among other things, interferes with the immune system. The researchers will now examine the interplay between fat in the diet and intestinal flora at a mechanistic level by combining diets with different fat composition with bacteria-free mice models – mice that are transplanted with intestinal flora from patients with fatty liver disease and mouse models lacking specific genes involved in the metabolism of fats.
Kristina Jakobsson, professor of clinical environmental medicine, and Tony Fletcher, who is an associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and affiliated with the Institute of Medicine, both are receiving grants for their investigations of how the health of Ronneby residents has been affected by contaminated drinking water. They are receiving a total of slightly more than SEK 5.3 million from Formas. Nearly five years ago it was discovered that every third household in Ronneby, Sweden, had been subjected for decades to perfluoroalkyl acids through drinking water contaminated by firefighting foam from a nearby airport. It is not clear what effects perfluoroalkyl acids have on people exposed to it, but studies of laboratory animals have shown that high concentrations may cause damage to the liver and affect fat metabolism, the immune system and reproductive capacity.
Among other things, the researchers will investigate how perfluoroalkyl acids leave the body, which is a prerequisite for being able to calculate how exposure has varied over time, based on levels in blood samples and how long the household’s drinking water has been contaminated. Because those affected will have had the elevated levels for a long time, this knowledge is essential in making an accurate assessment of risk and for good risk communication with those concerned. The researchers’ preliminary results show that there are large individual differences in the time it takes for the concentrations in blood samples to fall by half, which can depend on factors such as age, sex, renal function and the use of certain medications. By examining stored samples of blood, urine and feces, scientists can determine the relative importance of excretion by the kidneys and through the gastrointestinal tract. A series of research projects on the contamination in Ronneby are under way with researchers from Gothenburg, Lund, Uppsala and Stockholm involving the population’s health, the environmental impact and how fish have been affected by the emissions. The research can be applied to other areas and sources of water supplies contaminated by perfluoroalkyl acids, and it will be an important knowledge base for decision-makers formulating international limits and regulation of the use of these substances.
Tony Fletcher has been one of the principal investigators behind a large project in Ohio in the U.S., where the population around a factory had been exposed to high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, which is another of the substances in the perfluoroalkyl acids group. Residents of Ronneby have been exposed, however, to perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS).
Kerstin Persson Waye, professor of environmental medicine, especially noise research, is receiving close to SEK 3 million for a project that will investigate how preschools should be built to provide the best possible sound environment for children.
Today’s preschools are built to meet requirements applicable to adults, without regard to the activity to be conducted or to children’s specific hearing. Children have been shown to experience sound differently than adults because the shape of their shoulders, head, outer ear and auditory canal reinforces higher frequencies. Children are also more sensitive to high-frequency sounds, which increases the risk of hearing damage.
To contribute to greater knowledge and proposals for quality criteria for children’s sound environment, the project will investigate 33 preschools that have been built at different times, and the researchers will measure the room acoustics and sound environment and categorize the rooms. About 330 children will also be included, and their hearing cells will be examined with a special method two times a day to see if the sound environment affects hearing cell function. The children will also get to describe how they perceive their sound environment, how they handle sound and their well-being. The children’s experience and their hearing function will be related to room acoustics, sound recordings and room categorization.
The goal of the project is to contribute to adjustment of room acoustic parameters and criteria for children’s specific needs. In the short term these results are expected to have a positive impact on the health and well-being of children and staff, and in the longer term they are expected to lead to improved opportunities for children’s long-term development and health.
TEXT: ELIN LINDSTRÖM CLAESSEN
