LongITools

A European research project studying the interactions between environmental, lifestyle and biological factors to determine the risks of chronic cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.

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CARDIOMETABOLIC DISEASE – IT’S TIME FOR A NEW APPROACH

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of deaths in Europe, and metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and obesity, have reached epidemic proportions worldwide and continue to become more prevalent. Together, they put significant strains on healthcare budgets and services, and affect the daily lives millions of EU citizens. It is essential that we understand more about the causes of these diseases to aid in developing policies and interventions to both reverse and prevent them.

The increase in chronic cardiovascular and metabolic diseases has arisen alongside significant changes in our lifestyles and living environments. The circumstances in which we live, from the air we breathe, to our lifestyle choices, the built environment that surrounds us and the socioeconomic challenges everyday life brings, have fundamental impacts on our health. The collective impact of these circumstances, or exposures, across the life-course, is relatively unknown. Therefore, we should no longer look at health as a consequence of individual events, but as a complex journey.


LongITools’ research takes a holistic or ‘exposome’ approach and involves studying the impact of many exposures simultaneously. This approach enables the assessment of multiple environmental, socioeconomic, psychosocial, lifestyle and biological factors to which an individual is exposed throughout their life. Watch our new video to understand more.

We hope the findings arising from the LongITools research will help to fill knowledge gaps and identify disease risks and when best to intervene. Further knowledge will help identify opportunities for minimising risk factors, and enhancing protective factors, through evidence-based policies and interventions at critical life stages.


Updates

Our Project Partners

University of Oulu

The University of Oulu is responsible for coordinating and managing the project and leading work package 6, 10 and 11.

Erasmus MC

Erasmus is leading work package 4 and has research activities in work packages 3, 5, 6 and 7.

Imperial College London

Imperial College London is leading work package 3 and is responsible for the development of statistical methods and strategies.

Beta Technology

Beta is leading work package 9, coordinating all communication, dissemination and exploitation activity for the project.

University of Eastern Finland

The University of Eastern Finland is studying food-borne or lifestyle related environmental exposures and conducting metabolomics analysis.

Chalmers University of Technology

Chalmers is leading the identification of metabolomic and multiomic profiles of exposures in pregnancy and early life in WP4.

University Medical Center Groningen

UMCG leads work package 2 and is responsible for development of FAIR data infrastructure for multi-centre data stewardship and analysis.

National Institute of Medical Research

Inserm is responsible of 3 cohorts with relevant data for WPs 4-6 and is leading tasks 4.3 and 4.4.

University College London

University College London is participating in WP8 and is leading the development of the life-course model of health production.

Utrecht University

Utrecht is involved in research activities in work packages 2,3,4,5 and 6, leading on the modelling of environmental exposures.

University of Surrey

Surrey will participate in machine learning prediction in work package 3 and perform exposome-based analysis in very large data sets.

Amsterdam University Medical Centers, location AMC

Amsterdam University Medical Centre is mainly involved in WP6, responsible for studying the environmental determinants of cardiometabolic health trajectories.

University of Oslo

The University of Oslo will lead on RNA expression analysis in work packages 4,5 and 6.

University of Bristol

University of Bristol, home of ALSPAC, will lead WP5 on exposome trajectories and associated health in adolescents and young adults.

University of Barcelona

The University of Barcelona is leading work package 7 and is responsible for developing a proof-of-concept app for health monitoring.

Ab.Acus

ABACUS is developing the risk assessment app in work package 7 and running the proof of concept in Italy.

Cynexo

CyNexo is contributing to work package 7 by developing innovative IoT platforms and sensors to collect physiological and environmental data.

Tor Vergata University of Rome

UNITOV is leading work package 8, focusing on the economic implications and dynamic microsimulation modelling.