Body composition, the brain and human life history v1.01

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Body composition and the brain: investigating life history trade-offs in living humans

• IRAS ID

  151208

• Contact name

  Jonathan Wells

• Contact email

  jonathan.wells@ucl.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Institute of Child Health (UCL)

• Research summary

  Individuals show substantial variability in the general size, or volume, of organs such as the brain, liver and heart. Adipose tissue is even more variable, both between and within individuals over time. Studies which consider how these different organs and tissues relate to one another are rare. A better understanding of the basic relationships between components of the body will help us understand variability in chronic disease risk.

  Our project will investigate correlations between organs, skeletal muscle, fat tissue and the brain in order to address the question of how nutritional resources are allocated within the human body. We will focus the study on young, healthy South Asian women, who have high chronic disease risk associated with low levels of muscle mass, and a predisposition to central adiposity.

  Relationships between organs and tissues might be positive or negative, therefore our project will test three hypotheses:

  1) metabolically expensive organs have a negative association with brain volume
  2) adipose tissue volume is negatively associated with brain volume
  3) brain volume is positively correlated with organ or tissue volumes

  Our secondary hypotheses will examine whether associations between organs and tissues are correlated with markers of growth and nutrition in early life. The brain-body relationships observed in our sample may be associated with developmental traits such as birth weight (a marker of in utero weight gain), relative leg length (a marker of childhood environment), and total stature (overall body size). If negative or positive relationships correlate with birth weight, for example, it may indicate that foetal experience influenced the allocation of energy to competing organs and tissues.
  

• REC name

  London - Camden & Kings Cross Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  14/LO/1684

• Date of REC Opinion

  15 Oct 2014

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion