Approved Research

Elucidating host-environment interactions in gastrointestinal diseases

Lay summary

Unraveling the host-environmental interaction in the prevention of gastrointestinal diseases could significantly improve knowledge of the biological mechanisms and detect new types of markers for early detection.

We will investigate the causal relationships between known and novel risk factors and prevalent gastrointestinal disease, and disease progression phenotypes.

Our investigation will help to identify genetic variants, risk factors, and environmental influences that can then be used to accurately predict an individual's risk for developing various gastrointestinal diseases.

Scope extension:

Gastrointestinal and metabolic disease are a leading cause of morbidity in the US, Europe and worldwide. The following aims disentangle the causes, mediators, and environmental moderators from covariates in the pathways leading from health to gastrointestinal disease, as well as those governing their outcomes:

1) Identify prevention strategies for gastrointestinal diseases using genetic environmental and patient-specific data e.g., the metabolome

2) Investigate the interaction between genetics, psychosocial and environmental factors (e.g. smoking, alcohol use, medication, dietary intake, physical activity and nutrition), and gastrointestinal diseases their progression, response to therapy, survival, and other health-related outcomes.

3) Improve disease prediction accuracy by developing scores using classical statistics as well as machine learning.

The proposed research could significantly improve knowledge of the biological mechanisms that lead to metabolic disease, refine disease prevention and detect new types of markers for early detection of gastrointestinal diseases.

This information can assist health professionals in advancing treatment and prevention strategies for treating gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases.

Moreover, we would like to investigate serum markers and serum marker-based scores for organ dysfunction (e.g kidney and brain function).