83 results match your criteria: "Institute for Human Development and Potential[Affiliation]"

Physical activity (PA) may delay the onset of age-related diseases by decelerating biological aging. We investigated the association between leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) and metabolomics-based aging markers (MetaboAge and MetaboHealth) in late midlife and during 16 years of follow-up. At the 16-year follow-up, we also investigated the association between device-based PA and MetaboAge and MetaboHealth.

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Offspring health outcomes are often linked with epigenetic alterations triggered by maternal nutrition and intrauterine environment. Strong experimental data also link paternal preconception nutrition with pathophysiology in the offspring, but the mechanism(s) routing effects of paternal exposures remain elusive. Animal experimental models have highlighted small non-coding RNAs (sncRNAs) as potential regulators of paternal effects.

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Early life stress has far-reaching effects on various aspects of well-being in later life, but whether it impacts resilience, i.e., the ability to tolerate hardship, in old age remains unclear.

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Linking obesity-associated genotype to child language development: the role of early-life neurology-related proteomics and brain myelination.

EBioMedicine

March 2025

Centre for Quantitative Medicine, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, Republic of Singapore; Thompson School of Social Work & Public Health, Office of Public Health Studies, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

Background: The association between childhood obesity and language development may be confounded by socio-environmental factors and attributed to comorbid pathways.

Methods: In a longitudinal Singaporean mother-offspring cohort, we leveraged trans-ancestry polygenic predictions of body mass index (BMI) to interrogate the causal effects of early-life BMI on child language development and its effects on molecular and neuroimaging measures. Leveraging large genome-wide association studies, we examined whether the link between obesity and language development is causal or due to a shared genetic basis.

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Core features of positive mental health in adolescents and their protective role against psychopathology.

Sci Rep

February 2025

Institute for Human Development and Potential (IHDP), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), 30 Medical Drive, Singapore, 117609, Republic of Singapore.

Mental health is more than the absence of mental illnesses. However, while we acknowledge the importance of positive mental health, there is a lack of comprehensive understanding about positive mental health in adolescents and how it protects against psychopathology. This study seeks to understand adolescent positive mental health as a complex system by estimating the networks of components associated with positive mental health and their relationships to indicators of negative mental health.

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MetAssimulo 2.0: a web app for simulating realistic 1D and 2D metabolomic 1H NMR spectra.

Bioinformatics

March 2025

Section of Bioinformatics, Division of Systems Medicine, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London W12 0NN, United Kingdom.

Motivation: Metabolomics extensively utilizes nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy due to its excellent reproducibility and high throughput. Both 1D and 2D NMR spectra provide crucial information for metabolite annotation and quantification, yet present complex overlapping patterns which may require sophisticated machine learning algorithms to decipher. Unfortunately, the limited availability of labeled spectra can hamper application of machine learning, especially deep learning algorithms which require large amounts of labeled data.

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Background: Epidemiologic studies have shown that daily exposure to incense smoke is associated with greater risk of cardiovascular mortality, which suggests that chronic exposure to incense could be linked to atherosclerosis. We studied the association between home incense use and the risk of chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI), the most severe outcome of peripheral arterial disease.

Methods: We used data from the Singapore Chinese Health Study, which recruited 63,257 Chinese participants 45-74 years old from 1993-1998.

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This study evaluated metabolites and lipid composition in the calf muscles of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients and age-matched healthy controls using multi-dimensional MR spectroscopic imaging. We also explored the association between muscle metabolites, lipids, and intra-abdominal fat in T2DM. Participants included 12 T2DM patients (60.

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Healthy dietary patterns rich in legumes can improve metabolic health, although their additional benefits in conjunction with calorie restriction have not been well-established. We investigated effects of a calorie-restricted, legume-enriched, multicomponent intervention diet compared with a calorie-restricted control diet in 127 Chinese prediabetes participants, living in Singapore. The study was a 16-week, single-blind, parallel-design, randomized controlled trial (n = 63 intervention group (IG), n = 64 control group (CG); mean ± SD age 62.

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Characterisation of pregnancy-induced alterations in apolipoproteins and their associations with maternal metabolic risk factors and offspring birth outcomes: a preconception and longitudinal cohort study.

EBioMedicine

February 2025

Singapore Lipidomics Incubator, Life Sciences Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore; Department of Biochemistry and Precision Medicine Translational Research Programme, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. Electronic add

Background: Apolipoproteins as an integral part of lipoproteins are crucial for the transport and metabolism of lipids. However, there is a lack of longitudinal studies to quantify the concentrations of maternal apolipoproteins from preconception to postpartum and their associations with maternal metabolic health and offspring birth outcomes.

Methods: Quantification of apolipoproteins was performed on maternal plasma samples (N = 243 trios) collected at preconception, 26-28 weeks' pregnancy, and three months postpartum in the Singapore PREconception Study of long-Term maternal and child Outcomes (S-PRESTO) cohort study.

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Examining the moderation of the relationship between socio-economic status and consumption intentions by food information labels.

Appetite

March 2025

Division of Population Health Research, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA. Electronic address:

Front-of-package-labelling needs to portray health and/or sustainability information effectively to all consumers in a way that is both effective and equitable. There is mixed evidence for the effectiveness of such labels based on socioeconomic status (SES). Framing health consequences in an intuitive manner could help to reduce disparities in label comprehension across SES.

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This scientific commentary refers to 'Brain aging rejuvenation factors in adults with genetic and sporadic neurodegenerative disease', by Casaletto . (https://doi.org/10.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines the relationship between skin oxylipins, which are bioactive lipids produced from fatty acids by skin microbes, and different microbial communities on the skin of children and adults.
  • Findings highlighted that Malassezia restricta, a type of skin fungus, has a positive impact on the production of a specific oxylipin (9,10-DiHOME) in adults, while showing a negative correlation with its precursor in children, indicating differences in skin chemistry across age groups.
  • The research suggests a complex communication system between skin microbes and host lipid metabolism that could have implications for skin health, emphasizing the need for further exploration of these interactions for potential therapeutic applications.
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Cheek swabs, heterogeneous samples consisting primarily of buccal epithelial cells, are widely used in pediatric DNA methylation studies and biomarker creation. However, the decrease in buccal proportion with age in adults remains unexamined in childhood. We analyzed cheek swabs from 4626 typically developing children 2-months to 20-years-old.

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Background: Individuals born preterm at very low birthweight (VLBW, < 1500 g) tend to attain a smaller adult body size compared with term-born peers but less is known regarding specific body composition characteristics.

Objectives: We aimed to assess whether adults born at VLBW have less beneficial body composition characteristics, potentially mediating the association between VLBW birth and cardiometabolic disease. Sibling controls were used to account for the potential influence of shared genetic and/or lifestyle factors.

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Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by social deficits and repetitive behaviors. Environmental pollutants may contribute to the etiology of ASD, but studies of perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have shown conflicting results.

Objectives: We assessed associations between cord blood concentrations of PFAS with autistic traits at age seven years in a Singaporean birth cohort.

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Social behavior in ASD males: The interplay between cognitive flexibility, working memory, and functional connectivity deviations.

Dev Cogn Neurosci

January 2025

Institute for Human Development and Potential (IHDP), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A⁎STAR), 30 Medical Dr, Singapore 117609, Singapore; Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS), 10 Medical Dr, Singapore 117597, Singapore; Department of Diagnosti

Article Synopsis
  • * The study analyzed brain imaging data to create baseline functional connectivity patterns for non-ASD males and compared these with ASD males to identify individual deviations in brain connectivity.
  • * Findings revealed that certain brain network deviations correspond with specific social behavior issues, suggesting that enhancing cognitive flexibility and working memory could help improve social outcomes in ASD males.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study explores how the thalamus, a brain region with many connections, influences social behavior in children, especially those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
  • Researchers analyzed resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of the thalamus in ASD and typically developing children, finding significant links between thalamic activity and social communication scores.
  • Cognitive flexibility and emotional control were identified as key factors that mediate the relationship between thalamic connectivity and social behavior, suggesting that these areas could be targeted for interventions to improve social outcomes in children with ASD.
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Article Synopsis
  • * In a sample of 382 Asian women planning to conceive, the research identifies a new liver fat cutoff of 2.07% for diagnosing MetS, with trends indicating worsened MetS traits and plasma metabolomic changes as liver fat increases.
  • * Results show that preconception liver fat levels significantly correlate with the risk of gestational diabetes, with moderate liver fat (2.07% to 5.56%) doubling and high liver fat (≥5.56%) increasing the risk seven
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Background: Body mass index (BMI) trajectories have been used to assess the growth of children with respect to their peers, and to anticipate future obesity and disease risk. While retrospective BMI trajectories have been actively studied, models to prospectively predict continuous BMI trajectories have not been investigated.

Materials And Methods: Using longitudinal BMI measurements between birth and age 10 y from a mother-offspring cohort, we leveraged a multi-task Gaussian process approach to develop and evaluate a unified framework for modeling, clustering, and prospective prediction of BMI trajectories.

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Several cardiovascular traits and diseases co-occur with Alzheimer's disease. We mapped their shared genetic architecture using multi-trait genome-wide association studies. Subsequent fine-mapping and colocalisation highlighted 16 genetic loci associated with both Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.

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Background: Phenotypic age (PhenoAge), a widely used marker of biological aging, has been shown to be a robust predictor of all-cause mortality and morbidity in different populations. Existing studies on biological aging have primarily focused on individual domains, resulting in a lack of a comprehensive understanding of the multi-systemic dysregulation that occurs in aging.

Methods: PhenoAge was evaluated based on a linear combination of chronological age (CA) and 9 clinical biomarkers in 952 multi-ethnic Asian women of reproductive age.

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Capturing life transitions to elevate the value of examining dietary trajectories.

Am J Clin Nutr

November 2024

Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore and National University Health System, Singapore; Institute for Human Development and Potential, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore. Electronic address:

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Article Synopsis
  • Structural variants (SVs) play a crucial role in genetic differences that relate to traits and diseases, but most research has focused on European populations.
  • This study compiles a catalogue of over 73,000 SVs from a diverse group of 8,392 Singaporeans, revealing that about 65% of these SVs are novel and specific to Asian ancestry groups.
  • The findings help identify clinically relevant SVs and improve genetic research by addressing biases related to ancestry, which is important for equity and diversity in the field.
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