Publication

EMC – Guo X, Sulaiman M, Neumann A, Zheng SC, Cecil CAM, Teschendorff AE, Heijmans BT

Epigenetic research examines changes to the DNA that affect how active genes are. For this type of research, it is important to know from which cell type(s) the DNA come, because epigenetics are different between cells. As we often do not have exact information on the cell types, we use methods to estimate them. The cell types differ by age. Therefore, there are different methods for different age groups, but there is no one method available that can be used for all ages. In this project, we have developed such a method, called UniLIFE.

Read More

Covariance functions for Bayesian optimization are typically defined over unbounded domains, while we define a natural bounded domain kernel that works better on optimizing model compression.

Read More

The study looked at how to design a health app by working closely with doctors and researchers. A survey was used to find out what features the app should have. The results showed the app should be easy to use, track health automatically and manually, and include physical, mental, social, and environmental health. It also needs to follow strong ethical guidelines. People could use it for personal health, research, and making health decisions. In the future, patients and the public will help shape the app to make sure it’s useful and relevant for everyone.

Read More

Study aimed to explore the key psychological stressors experienced by older imprisoned persons and their coping strategies. Qualitative interviews were conducted between April 2017 and December 2018 with a purposive sample of 79 participants from 2 different groups in Switzerland: older imprisoned persons (n = 50) and mental health professionals (n = 29) with experience working in prisons. This study has identified various ways in which the prison environment not only undermines older incarcerated persons´ psychological well-being, but also their ability to manage the stress they are experiencing.

Read More

Older adults are increasingly facing multiple chronic diseases at the same time (known as multi-morbidity), which puts extra strain on health services. People age in environments that may support or hinder healthy lifestyle behaviours. The current study looked at how various environmental factors around where people live (for example, neighbourhood green space, nearby cars, sociodemographic context) are related to whether older people have one disease or several at once. The results indicate that living in areas with more green space was linked to lower odds of having a single chronic disease. In contrast, many of the other environmental exposures (like air pollution or chemical exposures) showed weaker or no clear associations. The results suggest that improving neighbourhood built environments may help support healthier aging by preventing or reducing multiple chronic conditions.

Read More

Body size in childhood can shape a person’s health later in life but most studies focus on single diseases. We followed 112,952 Danish children from age 15 to 60 years to see if disease patterns differed by childhood body size groups of underweight, normal weight, overweight or obesity. We found that children with obesity had the highest number of hospital diagnoses overall and were more likely to be diagnosed with obesity as adults than the other groups. However, children with obesity did not have major differences in the diagnoses of other diseases compared to the other groups. Our findings highlight the importance of investing in prevention and treatment of childhood obesity.

Read More