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Hannah Biomedical constitutes the major part of the Hannah Research Institute with a mission to:
generate and integrate new knowledge for the achievement of lifelong health and the prevention of lifestyle-related diseases in Scotland and thereby to contribute to the health and success of the next generation
This is delivered by two integrated programmes of research:
1)Lifestyle, Metabolism and Health: Altered metabolic interactions as mediators of lifestyle-related disease.
2)Life and Death of the Cell: Determinants of cell fate
This core research is aimed at the factors linking lifestyle and health, particularly those events in early life that have delayed or long-lasting effects on morbidity and mortality in later life. Lifestyle choices in nutrition, reproduction and infant feeding are key determinants of major diseases including those linked to obesity and breast cancer.
In strategic terms, the aim is
To determine the mechanistic links between lifestyle, physiology and pathogenesis in order for that evidence-based knowledge to be used to inform advice given by health professionals (for example on diet and health or on best practice for breast-feeding) and to permit intervention to prevent the supervention of deleterious links (for example between age of first pregnancy and the risk of developing breast cancer).
These approaches will also provide mechanistic tests of hypotheses on associations between lifestyle and health that are suggested from statistical, epidemiological studies.
Some of these associations between lifestyle and health are particularly evident in the West of Scotland, providing a major strategic drive to the research. The paper, Scotland's Health, A Challenge To Us All, The Scottish Diet (Scottish Home and Health Department 1993) clearly recognised the importance of intergenerational effects in establishing a poor cycle of health in Scotland. A good start in life is essential if that cycle is to be broken.
There are major groups in the University of Glasgow concerned with the links between lifestyle and health and Hannah Biomed research is aligned with the interests of key individuals in the Faculties of Medicine (Departments of Child Health, Human Nutrition, Medicine, Pathology), Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. In overall terms, the Hannahs strengths are in normal physiology in its widest sense and the linkages established will enable joint progress in understanding the events that lead to pathogenesis by lifestyle choices that are beyond the optimal for lifelong health.
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