University of Gothenburg
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bild på frukt och grönsaker
Photo: Jenny Pettersson
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Our goal

Through leading research and education, we understand, explain, and improve nutrition for health and during illness.

Photo: Malin Arnesson

Research areas

Our research on nutrition for health and disease is conducted within five different profile areas, which are described in more detail below.

Nutrition, Inflammation, and Cardiometabolic Health  

We study how diet affects our cardiometabolic health, including blood lipids and inflammation, both in healthy individuals and those with underlying diseases. The purpose of this research is to better understand how we should eat to prevent lifestyle-related illnesses and improve metabolic health in chronic diseases.

Projects

Sustainable eating habits

How we produce and consume food accounts for a large part of man's impact on the climate and environment. Together with researchers at Research Institutes Sweden (RISE), we are researching the relationship between dietary intake and both climate footprint and impact on the environment, among adults and among young people in Sweden. We also link this information to later risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death.

Projects

Objective and Subjective Methods for Assessing Dietary Intake

For nutritional research, it is crucial to have tools for measuring dietary intake and investigating the relationship between diet and health. The department Klinisk nutrition at Sahlgrenska Academy has a long history of developing and using methods to objectively measure dietary intake and nutritional status.

Professor Björn Isaksson, the first professor at Klinisk nutrition, published a description in 1980 on how nitrogen in urine can be used to objectively measure protein intake, which has since become an accepted validation method. The department also developed methods to measure intake of substances like iron using stable isotopes and an ileostomy model to assess absorption and excretion of various nutrients. Since 1998, equipment has been in place to measure total energy expenditure using the method Dubbelmärkt vatten (DLW).

At our department, we currently use several subjective methods to assess dietary intake, such as frequency questionnaires and 24-hour recall reports. Additionally, we explore objective biomarkers, including plasma fatty acids and metabolite patterns in urine or plasma. The challenge lies in identifying specific biomarkers that directly correlate with consumption levels of different nutrients, foods, or dietary patterns. This motivates our involvement in nutritional metabolomics, aiming to identify metabolite patterns in serum and urine through Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and Liquid-chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analyses.

Projects

Early Life Cycle Nutrition

We study the associations between dietary intake, nutritional status, and health throughout life. Our studies contribute to our understanding of the importance of diet and lifestyle during pregnancy, breastfeeding, childhood, and adolescence for overall health.

Projects

Nutrition in Disease

This encompasses various projects that study different aspects of nutritional treatment and how dietary interventions can be used to prevent, treat, and influence outcomes of various diseases. Examples of this include allergy-related lung diseases and rheumatic conditions.

Projects

People eating

Metabolic kitchen and laboratory

Epidemiological research

Epidemiological research involves studying the distribution of diseases and other health conditions in a population. Researchers often use data from registries and observational studies to explore associations between exposure and the occurrence of health problems or specific diseases. For example, they might investigate how individuals exposed to certain risk factors (such as poor diet, radiation, stress, or cigarette smoke) are affected and later develop conditions like cancer, obesity, or heart problems. 

Close connection between research and education

There is close cooperation between the Institute’s research and our education and training, in which many of our researchers too are involved. They supervise doctoral students and teach on our regular programmes, freestanding courses and vocational care programmes within Sahlgrenska Academy.

Our education