Suboptimal Health- A New Instrument for Chronic Disease Assessment

Project Outline:

Novel Subjective Measure: We recently developed an internationally validated tool to measure a subclinical, reversible stage of pre-chronic health that we coined the 'Suboptimal Health Status' (SHS), which is a physical state between health and disease characterised by 1) the perception of health complaints, general weakness, chronic fatigue, and low energy levels during the past 3 months; and 2) as a subclinical, reversible stage of chronic disease.
Novel Objective Measures: Complex and branching carbohydrate moieties that attach to proteins (referred to as glycans) are potentially novel markers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, where N-glycosylation is the most common post-translational protein modification contributing to the heterogeneity of protein action, which is advantageous for adapting to a changing environment.
Thus, a combination of N-glycome and SHS measures, taking into consideration the structure, function and role of the glycans, is proposed in this project where we hypothesise that N-glycome profiles, dysregulated in the presence of even mild subclinical disorders and in combination with subjective SHS measures, may be real-time indicators for the interaction between predisposition and the environment, and serve as important early screening tools for chronic diseases.

Desired Skills: Basic Knowledge in Biology or Epidemiology

Project Area: Public Health; Epidemiology; Biology

School / Research Centre / Institute: Centre for Precision Health

Supervisor(s): Professor Wei Wang

Project level: Masters, PhD

Funding: Applicant should apply for ECUHDR or RTP Scholarship

Start date: 2023