Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Minutes are attached.

Short-term Outcomes:

Objective 1: To conduct multidimensional assessments of diet, physical activity and related factors affecting aging adults.

• Objective 1 projects:
  • Improved dietary assessment skills of undergraduate and graduate nutrition students
  • Develop, in collaboration, methods to assess mitochondria function and mitochondria lipidome.
  • Implement pre-clinical feeding study to mimic aging and dietary fat composition comparisons.
  • Development of novel antibody phage display technology that will facilitate biomarker discovery
  • We found that GHS-R has a pivotal role inflammation in adipose tissue and liver of aging mice, GHS-R activates metabolic pathways to reprogram macrophage polarization toward a pro-inflammatory M1 state, subsequently eliciting meta-inflammation in adipose tissues and liver.
  • We worked to understand data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and explore predictors and effects of food insecurity in older adults. The analysis of food insecurity effects showed a positive link to depression (based on the CES-D scale) and risk of activities of daily living (ADL) limitations among older adults using 2006–2016 HRS and the joint model of propensity score matching and difference-in-difference analysis.
  • We further established a negative relationship between food insecurity and the healthy eating index (HEI) score, and also demonstrated a negative relationship between the HEI score and depression (using CES-D) and the HER score and disability (using ADL limitations) based on the 2013 HRS Health Care and Nutrition Study (HCNS), 2012-2016 HRS longitudinal data and the propensity score matching (PSM) model.
  • Developed a survey instrument comprised of NE1939 common tools to measure physical activity and exercise, diet, and overall health quality of life status of older adults pre-COVID-19 and since COVID-19 of adults ages 40 years and older.
  • Nutrition professionals working with older adults became familiar with techniques to collect focus group information online through our publication in the Journal of Gerontology and Geriatrics. This will benefit older adults through improved assessment of needs.

Objective 2:  To develop, implement and evaluate interventions that preserve or improve health in aging adults living in rural and urban environments.

• Objective 2 projects:
  • Promoted awareness of the SNAP among 6,000 older Iowans.
  • Conducted a four-week program to 110 older Iowans prior to the COVID-19 pandemic that led to a significant increase in familiarity among participants with recommended lifestyle practices. The majority also reported being “very likely” to make the recommended lifestyle behavior after each lesson.
  • A commodity and supplemental food nutrition education program (NEWS) reached about 4,000 older Iowans. Of those surveyed, 93.5% used the information provided to make food choices, 95.7% stated the budget tips were useful, and 72.6% made at least one of the recipes at home. The SNAP outreach program reached nearly 6,000 older adults.

Outputs:

• Collectively we trained 15 undergraduate students, 18 graduate students, 5 Post-Doctoral Associates and 5 Extension personnel. The skills acquired by these trainees include:
• Quantitative research (e.g., data collection, data entry, analysis)
• Qualitative research (e.g., conducting focus groups, analyzing focus group data, etc.)
• Professional writing (e.g., manuscripts, abstracts, theses)
• Laboratory skills (e.g., telomere length assays, northern blots, etc.)
• Anthropometric measures (e.g., height, weight, skin folds, etc.)
• Nutritional Status assessment (e.g., DST, MNA)
• Dietary Intake Assessment (e.g., 24-hour food recalls, food records, etc.)
• Program implementation
• Collectively we received 45 grants ($3,929,866 Total): 11 Federal, 8 state, 7 Foundation, 9 University, 6 research station, and 4 “other” grants.
• The team published 35 journal articles including 1 joint journal articles (Mississippi, Iowa, Rhode Island, and West Virginia) and 16 published abstracts including one joint abstract (Washington DC and Iowa).
• The team provided 14 research presentations.
• The team supervised the publication of 9 theses and/or dissertations.
• 3 Extension SNAP outreach materials, 5 Bodywise Extension newsletters, and 2 food security screener tools and manuals were produced

Activities:

• Five states (ISU, WVU, OSU, UCONN, UMD) submitted a NIFA grant to support the proposed Undergraduate Student Training in Aging Research (STAR) Internship. The STAR Internship will provide a comprehensive multi-disciplinary, translational nutrition and aging training experience for 24 undergraduate students from diverse and underrepresented groups from five states (Connecticut, Iowa, Ohio, Washington DC, and West Virginia) that are part of the USDA NE: 1939 multistate research project if funded.

• Four articles were published in a special issue in Topics in Clinical Nutrition about the work that has been completed through the NE1439 multistate project. (All objectives)

• Seven states (ISU, SDSU, WVU, UMD, UDC, UIUC, URI) initiated a large scale needs assessment of 1,200 adults ages 40 years and older across 7 states.

Milestones:

• Completed dietary assessment (food records) for federally funded project (Lifestyle management of CKD in obese diabetic patients. NIH 5R01DK100492-02).
• Completed optimization of antibody phage display library construction January 2020.
• Developed with Dr. Baskin mitochondria function measurement using Seahorse technology Developed strong collaboration including the genesis of preliminary data for assessing the mitochondria lipidome. Implemented two pre-clinical studies.
• Testing the food security screening tool and expanding it to incorporate a dietary component.
• The construction of the HEI score was one of key factors in our project as it is not provided in the dataset and had to be developed. All relevant measures have been coded and cleaned. 
• The team launched a multistate needs assessment of 1200 aging adults ages 40 years and older across 7 states. This will inform our future intervention projects.
• Understanding macrophage reprogramming is of great importance for combating inflamm-aging that is relevant to a wide range of age-associated chronic diseases. Our preliminary data suggest that GHS-R have an important role in macrophage polarization during aging, and GHS-R may serve as a crucial sensor and metabolic regulator for macrophage reprogramming. Our data provide proof-of-concept evidence that suppressing GHS-R in macrophages attenuates inflammation in various tissues and improve insulin sensitivity, promoting a healthy aging phenotype. GHS-R antagonist has potential to be a novel strategy for prevention and treatment of obesity and fatty liver diseases in aging.
• We characterized the anti-inflammatory function of honey-derived exosome-like nanoparticles, which is under revision by the Journal of Extracellular Vesicles. This achievement is considered as a milestone for our studies.
• We disseminated information and findings from this project to nutrition and aging professionals through many publications.
• We introduced physical activity interventions to older adults with and without disease (e.g. cancer) to improve overall immune response and vaccine efficacy

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