Nya blodbaserade biomarkörer för spegling av mikrobiota, kost och deras interaktion associerad med typ 2 diabetes risk

Forskningsprojekt, 2020 – 2022

The Scandinavian countries have a leading position in epidemiological research based on well-established, largescale cohorts with long follow-up and large numbers of prospective cases of cardiometabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes (T2D). However, these cohorts have in general not collected feces or saliva samples for assessment of microbiota, which prevents prospective analyses of the role of gut microbiota for these diseases. It would therefore be very valuable if novel, validated markers for GI microbiota, diet and their interaction reflected in the molecular phenotype of the host could be developed, in order to unlock the potential of existing cohorts and thereby save resources and address the role of microbiota, diet and their interaction in the development of T2D, by using avialable blood samples. The overall aim of this project is to identify and validate novel bloodbased biomarkers of GI microbiota through metabolomic profiling of plasma, bacterial identification through buffy coat-extracted DNA and antibody profiling in plasma. In addition, these biomarkers will be used to evaluate associations between derived biomarkers and T2D in an established nested case-control study within the VIP-cohort. Findings will be replicated in an external cohort using samples and data from the national VR-funded SIMPLER-infrastructure.