Looking for inflammation in early life that sets the stage for heart disease

GlycA as a novel biomarker linking bacterial-mediated inflammation to adverse cardiometabolic and cardiovascular traits in the young

Inflammation can cause changes to arteries and blood that increase the risk of heart and circulatory diseases in later life. Some teenagers and young adults already show signs of these changes, but why this happens isn’t fully understood. As inflammation is a natural response to infection, these changes might occur more often in people who are more frequently exposed to infections. Alternatively, a poor diet, not exercising and becoming overweight may alter the ‘good bacteria’ that live within the gut, and trigger an inflammatory response. Professor Deanfield and his team at University College London aim to test whether inflammation caused by bacteria can promote potentially damaging changes to the blood and arteries. The project will use blood samples from healthy young adults exposed to a bacterial molecule to see how the levels of inflammatory factors in their blood change over time. They will also kill the normal bacteria living in the gut with antibiotics, and then look at how this affects inflammation and heart and circulatory function after consuming a diet high in fat and sugar. Finally, they will test whether they can link the changes they see to levels of markers of inflammation in the blood. This includes a newly discovered marker of the immune response to bacteria, called GlycA. The hope is that this marker could be used to help predict which young people are more likely to have heart and circulatory problems in later life.