GCAT starts a new project: Chrono-diet!

This month the research project began: "Deciphering the link between chrono-nutrition and cardiometabolic disorders from an epigenetic perspective", funded by La Marató last November, and coordinated by researcher Camille Lassale from the Health Institute Global of Barcelona (ISGlobal) and Rafael de Cid, scientific director of the GCAT'Genomes for life project (Germans Trias i Pujol Research Institute). The project will last three years and will have a grant of around €300,000, raised in the last 2022 edition of La Marató for cardiovascular health.

The objective of this new research is to comprehensively describe the eating habits and schedules (chrono-nutrition) in a population cohort of adults from Catalonia (GCAT-IGTP) and relate them to the cardiovascular health status of the participants and their relationship with the appearance of chronic diseases, such as diabetes. This is the first large-scale prospective study to describe chrono-nutritional and other circadian behaviors, and their effect on epigenetic modification of DNA. To do this, the researchers will describe the eating habits of the Catalan GCAT population cohort, establish nutritional patterns, and through advanced statistical methods, associate them with cardiometabolic traits.

To delve into the underlying mechanisms, they will analyze nearly 900,000 epigenetic marks in the genome, in 600 samples from the cohort. The results of this analysis, associated with sex, chronotype and sleep patterns, will allow us to identify key points in the genome that may be mediating the previously observed associations. All the information generated will be available to the scientific community, and will serve to prepare lists of recommendations for clinical and social use, for the prevention and management of nutritional and metabolic disorders.