The role of inflammation in the development of metabolic disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The role of pattern recognition receptors or inflammasome components in the development of metabolic disease
IRAS ID
261430
Contact name
William Alazawi
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Queen Mary, University of London
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
More than 1 in 3 people in the West are overweight or obese. Obesity increases the risk of several other diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. People with obesity have high levels of inflammation. Inflammation normally helps us to fight infections, but it can also cause unhealthy metabolism, leading to an imbalance in energy usage and storage in the body, and particularly the liver.
Many of the chemical reactions that occur in inflammation also occur in metabolism and the genes that control these reactions are inherited. These genes vary between individuals and some people don't have them at all. Our aim is to understand the link between inflammation and metabolism by studying metabolism in people who lack certain genes involved in inflammation.
The Genes and Health project tries to find people who lack certain genes and so we will partner with this project to invite people who don't have inflammation genes and their household relatives to take part in our study.
Consenting participants would attend for 1 visit lasting approximately 90 min to provide a medical history, blood, stool, urine and saliva samples for laboratory analysis and undergo a whole body fat scan and liver scan after informed consent. New experimental techniques allow us to treat blood cells so they start to resemble different cells, such as liver or fat cells. This allows us to study the effect of individual genes in different parts of the body without having to use a needle to take a biopsy.
By understanding the influence of inflammation on metabolism, we will learn how we can turn these processes off and develop better treatments for the complications of obesity.
REC name
London - Queen Square Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/LO/1013
Date of REC Opinion
3 Jul 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion