A lack of physical activity, an unbalanced diet and stress at work combined with environmental factors all damage health and have been proven to aggravate chronic inflammatory processes. These can lead in turn to cardiovascular disease, obesity, chronic kidney disease and metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.
An international team of researchers led by Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association now hopes to pinpoint the key factors for chronic inflammation and develop prevention strategies using artificial intelligence (AI) as part of the EU project IMMEDIATE (Imminent Disease Prediction and Prevention at the Environment Host Interface).
Department of Medicine 4 - Nephrology and Hypertension (director: Prof. Dr. Mario Schiffer) at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen is one of five institutions in Germany involved in the extensive research project.
"During the IMMEDIATE project, AI will evaluate data from three existing large-scale prospective studies," explains Prof. Schiffer. "Our aftercare program 'NTx360°' for children, adolescents and adults who have received a kidney transplant is one of the three international studies that have been selected." A total of twelve research institutions across the EU, the UK and Israel are working together in IMMEDIATE, which is funded by the EU's "Horizon Europe" framework program over a period of four years with a total budget of 6.2 million euros.
Intervention in predictable diseases
The researchers involved in the IMMEDIATE program are focusing on unhealthy eating habits and their influence on the microbiome in the human gut. The gut is responsible for regulating inflammatory processes that can be positively influenced with a change in diet.
In IMMEDIATE, the researchers intend to investigate the factors triggering inflammation on the axis between diet, gut, metabolism and immune system as a decisive interface for the health-disease transition. Unraveling the involved mechanisms will allow researchers to define biomarkers for the resulting diseases and increase their predictability.
Use of artificial intelligence
In most cases, individuals only take action against chronic inflammation when a manifested organ dysfunction results in clinical symptoms. This is where IMMEDIATE is to come into play, using the potential AI offers to introduce individual preventative measures before symptomatic diseases occur. Modern holistic analysis technologies are using the comprehensive datasets and organic samples from three current cohort studies to develop risk profiles for which a change in lifestyle and diet habits could prevent inflammatory disease.
Just how successful an individual preventative approach can be is demonstrated by the results of the "NTx 360°" aftercare program, for which Prof. Schiffer was awarded the Future Prize of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Nephrologie e. V. last year. "The interventions in 'NTx 360°' allowed us to attain a physical and mental quality of life for adults who have received a kidney transplant comparable to the general German population," he explains.
Preventative health apps as the goal
In the IMMEDIATE research project, the accuracy of the AI algorithms are to be checked in a feasibility study investigating the extent to which a microbial intervention could have an anti-inflammatory effect. The participants in the research study will be health care professionals who are subject to a consistently high level of stress, such as physicians, nursing staff and paramedics.
In addition, the results from the study are to be used to optimize the apps developed by the IMMEDIATE consortium aimed at improving individuals' lifestyles, thereby helping all people take a proactive approach to monitoring their own health. "Our society and our environment are changing and we need new prevention strategies if we are to stay healthy," explains Prof. Dr. Friedemann Paul from Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, who is coordinating the international IMMEDIATE project.
