Lab Director, Dr. George Slavich, has published a new article in the leading journal, Nature Medicine, in which he and his collaborators from Stanford University employed a big data, precision medicine approach to study human health and disease. The result yielded more than 67 new, clinically actionable health discoveries involving patients’ risk for metabolic, cardiovascular and oncologic diseases.
Precision health relies on the ability to assess disease risk at an individual level, detect early preclinical conditions and initiate preventive strategies. Recent technological advances in omics and wearable monitoring enable deep molecular and physiological profiling and may provide important tools for precision health.
Dr. Slavich and colleagues explored the ability of deep longitudinal profiling to make health-related discoveries, identify clinically relevant molecular pathways and affect behavior in a prospective longitudinal cohort of 109 adults. The cohort underwent integrative personalized omics profiling from samples collected quarterly for up to 8 years using clinical measures and emerging technologies including genome, immunome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, microbiome and wearable monitoring.
Dr. Slavich and colleagues in turn discovered more than 67 clinically actionable health discoveries and identified multiple molecular pathways associated with metabolic, cardiovascular and oncologic pathophysiology. They also developed prediction models for insulin resistance by using omics measurements, illustrating their potential to replace burdensome tests.
Finally, study participation led the majority of participants to implement diet and exercise changes that helped improve their physical and mental health. Altogether, Dr. Slavich and colleagues concluded that deep longitudinal profiling can lead to actionable health discoveries and provide relevant information for precision health.
Download article: A Longitudinal Big Data Approach for Precision Health
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Dr. Slavich is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, a Research Scientist at the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, Associate Director of the NIA Stress Measurement Network, and Director of the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research.
