Objective
Cardiovascular disease is a major health problem in Europe, causing 50% or more of all deaths at considerable cost to health services. Obesity is a growing problem in Europe, and as the population becomes more obese so an increase in obesity-related diseases, especially cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus, is to be expected. Therefore a better understanding of the origins and treatment of these common conditions must be important both in public health terms and in terms of advice to, or treatment of the individual. Both cardiovascular disease and obesity must represent the result of interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Both have increased rapidly in the present century, over a period when the gene pool in Europe is unlikely to have changed significantly. On the other hand, not all people develop these conditions despite many common environmental factors throughout Europe. A clear example is seen from the results of the Europe-wide MONICA study: death-rates from cardiovascular disease vary widely in different parts of Europe, even when adjusted for factors such as obesity. The overall working hypothesis for FATLINK is that dietary fatty acids are an important mediator of the development of obesity and cardiovascular disease, and that a greater understanding of the effects of dietary fatty acids, in terms of their role in regulation of gene expression and their metabolic pathways in different tissues, will enable us to provide more soundly-based nutritional advice, to develop new pharmacological treatments for these diseases, and possibly to develop new foods with specific physiological functions aimed at combating the development of these conditions. In parallel, we propose that the effects of very-low-calorie diets and exercise programmes used for weight control may be understood as 'negative dietary energy', or removal of dietary fatty acids. Again, when the interaction of these treatments with gene expression is more clearly understood, it may be possible better to tailor these treatments to individuals likely to respond, and on a population level it may be possible to improve the prescription of such treatments.
The immediate objectives of this Concerted Action are therefore the following:
- To understand the regulation of gene expression in different tissues by dietary fatty acids, concentrating on genes likely to be involved in cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance how this differs between individuals, and how it depends on nutritional factors including oxidizability, and how this is modified by dietary anti-oxidants
- To understand the effects of 'negative energy' in the form of very-low-calori diets and exercise programmes, in terms of the regulation of gene expression and fatty acid metabolism.
The longer-term objectives are:
obesity, to aid weight control, and to reduce cardiovascular disease risk based on a clearer understanding of nutrient-gene interactions
- To improve the prescription of weight-reducing and controlling measures, such as very-low-calorie diets and exercise programmes, on both a population and an individual basis.
There will be a substantial component of methodological development, with the following goals: - To standardize clinical protocols and description of subjects, allowing comparison of data from different centres within FATLINK reaction (RT-cpcr) technique to determine mrna levels of multiple markers in human adipose tissue and muscle, and their response to nutritional manipulation. Regulation in vivo substrate utilization and oxidation measured by means of tracer techniques.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic health
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineendocrinologydiabetes
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculeslipids
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicinecardiologycardiovascular diseases
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutritionobesity
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CON - Coordination of research actionsCoordinator
31403 Toulouse
France