Weight change and the onset and progression of cardiovascular diseases in large scale electronic health records
Most research into weight and health has focused extensively on body mass index (BMI) levels across different populations of people at a single point in time. However, there has been no study looking at the relationship between weight changes over time and the effect this has on the risk of heart and circulatory diseases. Dr Michail Katsoulis is being funded with a BHF Fellowship to use large sets of data to fill this knowledge gap. He is using Electronic Health Records (routinely measured by doctors) to calculate patterns of weight fluctuation in more than 8 million people, using more than 35 million measurements taken between 1998 and 2016. Dr Katsoulis plans to make use of cutting-edge statistical methods to estimate the impact of different weight change patterns (and other heart disease risk factors) on the onset and progression of circulatory diseases. He will also look at whether the effects of the weight fluctuations are influenced by age, sex, body mass index and other factors. Heart risk prediction scores are used by clinicians for prescribing statins and blood pressure-lowering drugs. Dr Katsoulis wants to test whether changes in body weight may add useful predictive information to these scores, providing a reliable measurement that can help to predict and prevent heart and circulatory diseases.
Project details
| Grant amount | £272,470 |
|---|---|
| Grant type | Fellowships |
| Application type | Immediate Postdoctoral Basic Science Research Fellowship |
| Start Date | 01 February 2018 |
| Duration | 4 years |
| Reference | FS/18/5/33319 |
| Status | In Progress |
