Approved Research

Identifying dietary and metabolomic signatures of arthritis onset in longitudinal data (the DESIGNA Study)

Lay summary

Understanding how diet might prevent arthritis is of continuing interest to patients and the public. Whilst the relationship between specific diets and arthritis is frequently reported in the scientific and popular literature, considerable uncertainty remains and advice given by health professionals on the best diet to follow is often either nonspecific or conflicting.

Providing the scientific evidence needed to give clear advice on the role of diet in arthritis is challenging.  Diet is difficult to measure accurately. To determine if diet influences the risk and progression of diseases needs information collected over long periods of time.

The ability to study diet and arthritis has recently been enhanced by the capacity to characterise large numbers of molecules (known as metabolites) involved with disease. Some metabolites are influenced by dietary exposure, offering insight into how specific nutrients might influence the onset and progression of disease.

Our group has recently received funding from the charity 'Versus Arthritis' to examine data from two large population studies, EPIC-Norfolk and the Norfolk Arthritis Register (NOAR) which include data on diet and arthritis.  EPIC participants study had metabolites measured before the onset of disease and NOAR includes people with arthritis who have been followed regularly for 20 years. The analysis of samples from these studies will allow us to identify dietary related metabolites that predict the onset and progression of osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

To ensure the reliability of our findings, we are looking to replicate our analysis in other independent datasets, specifically UK biobank which contains comparable dietary and metabolomic data. This work will help identify effective ways to predict and prevent the onset and progression of arthritis.