Immediate career goals that the Division of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio provides me the opportunity to pursue as a diabetes and cardiovascular epidemiologist, include training in statistical genetics and implementation of my own study. These skills are essential for my career development, my long-term career objective being to establish a solid independent research program as a genetic epidemiologist. The objective of the research project is to investigate and characterize intrauterine and early childhood exposures and their relationship to the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes in two ongoing studies, the San Antonio Family Diabetes Study (SAFDS) and the San Antonio Family Heart Study (SAFHS). The SAFDS and the SAFHS are studies of low-income Mexican American families that combined include 2,361 adult participants from over 80 extended families. In each study, a standardized medical examination has been completed, including measurements of anthropometry and blood pressure, a fasting venipuncture and an oral glucose tolerance test. Moreover, in the coming months, a complete genomic scan of 400 highly polymorphic markers distributed throughout the genome at approximately 10 centimorgan intervals will be available on the vast majority of participants.
Specific aims of the proposed project include collecting self-reported information on breast-feeding from over 1600 participants and mother, reported information on an array of early life exposures on 999 participants. Mother-reported exposures of interest include duration of breast-feeding, maternal smoking and alcohol consumption during pregnancy, gestational hypertension and/or diabetes during pregnancy, inter-pregnancy interval, and the time interval between pregnancy and future development of diabetes (among diabetic individuals). Research questions of interest include the association between early life exposures and adult obesity and diabetes, whether the heritability of diabetes and obesity is influenced by early life exposures that are themselves likely to be familial, and finally the identification of genes and gene by environment interactions related to obesity and diabetes. The proposed study, by combining previously collected information in two established studies with collection of information on early life exposures, bridges the gap between genetics and epidemiology, offering a unique training opportunity and an opportunity to further our understanding of obesity and diabetes.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 12 publications
