Epidemiology of inflammation and cardiovascular diseases

The proposed project aims to extend the current special research program SFB-F54 (Cellular Mediators Linking Inflammation and Thrombosis, http://inthro.meduniwien.ac.at/) towards a citizen science contribution. The goal is to generate valuable epidemiological data from routine health checks and lifestyle factors, while simultaneously sensitizing a significant number of people to science in the field of cardiovascular diseases and integrating them into the research process. To that end, we plan to run a collaboration project with about 75 upper school students and 3 teachers, who will further integrate about 375 family members (5 per student) into the project. Thus, health data from about 450 individuals will be collected. This will comprise parameters of young, healthy persons, but also those of elder family members, who do not show any clear clinical symptoms but potentially exhibit already pre-stages of cardiovascular diseases. Such pre-morbidities are often associated with chronic inflammation, which is linked to lifestyle factors such as obesity or type-2 diabetes. Epidemiological data obtained from this cohort will be analyzed by the students in collaboration with teachers and scientists. Based on that, two subgroups will be selected and investigated in more detail: about 30 healthy students (> 18 years old) and some 30 elder family members with potential pre-morbidities. Blood samples from these 60 individuals will be analyzed for specific markers of inflammation and coagulation. In addition, RNA of the leukocytes will be sequenced completely to determine gene expression profiles quantitatively and potential epigenetic alterations will be determined by DNA methylation analysis. These data will be analyzed by professional bioinformatics and methods of systems biology to elucidate complex disease-networks. The results of the investigations will be communicated in a structured feedback-process to the participants of the study and will be provided electronically in anonymized form to the general public as well.

The project " Epidemiology of inflammation and cardiovascular diseases" was designed as a citizen science project to be able to investigate influences of lifestyle factors as well as psychological stress in childhood on health parameters. Furthermore, epigenetic changes of white blood cells should be analyzed in a smaller group of participants. For the purpose of the project, a cooperation with a high school in Lower Austria was initiated. Students of the last two grades were asked to recruit family members for an anonymous online survey, in which the subjects entered the results of a health examination in combination with lifestyle information (such as dietary or sleeping habits, living environment, etc.). In addition, participants were asked to complete a psychological questionnaire about their childhood, as there is circumstantial evidence that higher psychological stress in childhood can lead to chronic inflammatory conditions. Subsequently, medical students were also involved to recruit study participants, resulting in a dataset of approximately 350 individuals at the end of the project. Each individual parameter in the dataset was correlated with all other parameters, which led to the identification of many unexpected correlations that were statistically significant. The students used this information for medical diploma theses, which comprised topics such as correlations between sleep habits and chronic inflammatory conditions, or the influence of the dietary lifestyle on various health parameters. Besides the anonymous online survey, some subjects were also recruited for blood draws, in which specific coagulation analyses were performed on the one hand, and the epigenetic state of white blood cells was determined on the other. Here, the methylation of the DNA was analyzed, which allows conclusions about the accessibility of the genome to regulatory factors. This analysis revealed that with increasing age, those DNA regions that code for inflammatory genes become more activatable. This supports the concept that aging is associated with increasing chronic inflammatory states that favor the onset of cardiovascular disease.