Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Minutes 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.
  • Improved data analysis skills of graduate nutrition students.
  • Completed a needs assessment in aging adults and healthcare professionals working with aging adults related to diet and physical activity.
  • Achieved measurable benefits to our junior non-tenured faculty including:
    • Establishing a research agenda. Since the publication of project-based joint articles, faculty have been active in other publications.
    • Skill development in both quantitative and qualitative research methods of scientific inquiries.
    • Development of new institutional- and project-based collaboration to support the NE1939 project area in brain health.
  • Worked on completing analyses of the association between the quality of diet among older Americans and their physical and mental health. We have completed this study and prepared a manuscript for journal submission (currently undergoing editorial work). Our study constructed the Healthy Eating Index-2015 to assess diet quality and link it to changes in disability (measured by functional limitations of activities of daily living), depression, and five blood-based biomarkers (glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c), C-reactive protein (CRP), high-density lipoprotein (HDL), total cholesterol, and Cystatin C). In addition, we assessed how food insecurity was linked to the HEI-2015 and identified modifiers of this relationship for older adults.
  • Continued to study the relationship of dietary PUFA biomarkers as predictors of cardiometabolic disease and biological aging biomarkers. We found significant relationships between higher blood levels of PUFAs (n3 and Linoleic acid) with measurements of lean mass, reduced inflammation, increased heart rate variability and better sleep quality.
  • Chronic inflammation is a major pathology for aging which affects a wide range of tissues, termed “inflamm-aging”. Aging correlates with increased obesity and insulin resistance, which is known to associated with low-grade chronic inflammation in both central and peripheral tissues. Ghrelin receptor - Growth Hormone Secretagogue Receptor (GHS-R) is increasingly recognized to have important roles in metabolism and inflammation. We found that GHS-R has a critical role in inflammation of of aging mice, GHS-R activates metabolic pathways to reprogram macrophage polarization toward a pro-inflammatory state, subsequently eliciting meta-inflammation in adipose tissues, liver and brain.
  • Worked on a biomarker discovery platform technology to find circulating biomarkers of adverse and/or healthy aging. To develop this technology, I have been profiling cancer cells because there is substantial literature with which to validate the results.  Just recently, I obtained that Mass Spectrometry (MS) data and uncovered over 50 cancer biomarkers validating this technology and I can now begin to apply this to older adults to find biomarkers for healthy aging which could serve as the basis for future therapies.
  • Wrote a proposal for a project assessing skin carotenoid levels and acceptability of the skin carotenoid level in urban aging adults.

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:
  • Our SNAP outreach program efforts promoted SNAP awareness among 7,000 older Iowans. We reached 55 older Iowans through the online Stay Independent: A Healthy Aging Series program. Stay Independent participation 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 reached about 4,000 older Iowans. Of those surveyed, 73.3% used the information provided to make food choices, 72.4% stated the budget tips were useful, and 69.6% made at least one of the recipes at home.
  • Expanded the use of Expanded Food Security Scale that we developed to identify older adults at risk for economic and physical food insecurity. Several State Units on Aging or nutrition programs have adopted or are considering adopting the tool.

 Outputs:

• Collectively we trained 42 undergraduate students, 29 graduate students, 6 Post-Doctoral Associates and 16 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 17 grants ($1,747,915 Total): 7 Federal, 2 state, 2 Foundation, 5 University, and 1 research station.  
• The team published 29 journal articles and 18 published abstracts.
• The team provided 17 research presentations.
• The team supervised the publication of 4 theses and/or dissertations.
• 1 Extension SNAP outreach materials

Activities:

• Five states (ISU, WVU, OSU, UCONN, UMD) resubmitted 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.
• Seven states (ISU, SDSU, WVU, UMD, UDC, UIUC, URI) collaborated on a large-scale needs assessment of 1,250 adults ages 40 years and older across 7 states and are preparing manuscripts and projects based on these data.
• Three states (ISU, URI and SDSU) submitted an AOL Community Research Grant Application on Sarcopenia (LifeSpan).
• Two team members (Kathleen Wolfe [NYU] and Ingrid Lofgren [URI] submitted a USDA Integrated Project Application.

Milestones:

• Completed multistate nutrition and wellness needs assessment of 1250 aging adults and 435 health care professionals working in the area of aging. The data is being used to inform our future intervention projects.
• Prepared 3 publications from the needs assessment for submission to peer-reviewed journals.
• Generated strains of C. elegans that can used to mimic the effect of caloric intake on bioenergetic status of animals - optimized an imaging platform for automated measurement of lifespan in C. elegans.
• Completed dietary assessment using Dietary Inflammatory Index from food records from externally funded projects.
• Brain Health Work Group is actively preparing a narrative literature review for submission to a national journal for publication. Brain Health Work Group will submit to the RFA from the USDA on Chronic diseases in Spring 2022.
• Completed a manuscript for peer review and journal submission. Student training in preparing his first complete manuscript for a journal submission.
• Submitted two grant applications to support NE1939 projects. One was an application to the Administration on Community Living to support the creation and evaluation of the LifeSPAN program (ISU, URI, SDSU); not funded but scored well. The second was a NIFA resubmission to support an undergraduate Student Training in Aging Research (STAR) internship opportunity (ISU, OSU, WVU, Uconn, UDC); not funded but scored well.
• Completed common tool SPSS codebooks and standardized surveys.
• We estimated that between 126,000 and 13.2 million out of the current population of 331 million Americans are likely prone to type-2 diabetes due to long-term sub-optimal selenium status as little as 23% lower than nutritional needs. This is a cost-effective approach to counteract type 2 diabetes during the aging process.
• Completed the telephone survey of home-delivered meal participants. In the process of analyzing data.
• A tangible milestone was achieved over the summer when we were able to unequivocally confirm our biomarker discovery platform works as intended (despite setbacks brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic). After discussions with colleagues at an annual meeting of NE1439 (the precursor to NE1939), my lab set out to develop an unbiased system to find circulation biomarkers of aging. For this, we decided a system capable of selecting low-level circulating factors was needed to completely profile aging biomarkers.  To develop this technology, we have been using a cancer model and have since identified numerous cancer biomarkers and now we are ready to deploy this technology to older adults to try and find markers of healthy and unhealthy aging.

Attached