The IATA's research group "Microbial Ecology, Nutrition and Health", led by Dr. Yolanda Sanz, participates in the kick-off meeting of the new European project of the H2020 program "EarlyCause", which will investigate the effects of stress on mental health and cardio- metabolic throughout life.
Early life stress (ELS) is a widely prevalent phenomenon which affects about 75 % of pregnant women – thus their fetus– and nearly 50% of young children, which long-lasting consequences on human health. The EarlyCause project will study the hypothesis that ELS, a well-established risk factor for depressive, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders individually, is a cause of multi-morbidity in these disorders. The project wants to identify the causative mechanisms and molecular pathways that link ELS with these comorbid conditions. In addition, it will quantify the environmental, sex and gender, socioeconomic, lifestyle and behavioural factors to find potential intervention strategies that could reverse causative mechanisms and reduce the effect of ELS in individuals at high risk of developing multi-morbidity. The project, which the European Commission (2020-2023) funded with six million euros, will use big data, animal experiments and artificial intelligence to identify new clinical knowledge, quantitative biomarkers and clinical tools to assess disease and comorbidity induced by early life stress.
The EarlyCause comprises the following fourteen institutions from eight European countries: University of Barcelona, the European Bioinformatics Institute (United Kingdom), Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam (Netherlands), University of Zurich (Switzerland), King’s College London (United Kingdom), the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC, Spain), Centre Européen de Recherche en Biologie et Médicine (France), University of Oulu (Finland), Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico – Fatebenefratelli, (Italy), University of Bath (United Kingdom), VU Amsterdam Medical Centre (Netherlands), Empirica GmbH (Germany), Combinostics Oy (Finland) and Pompeu Fabra University (Spain).
EarlyCause started on January 1, 2020, and its kick-off meeting was held at the Historical Building of the UB on January 15 and 16.