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Six projects in epidemiology will get seed funding

Six projects in epidemiology will get seed funding

Lund University and SRA EpiHealth has decided to support six projects with seeding funding that will cover salary costs for preparation of a project application and a research plan targeting national funding bodies. 

Lena Sandin Wranker, one of the recipients of the funding, is a research assistant, PhD, and a specialist physician in pain rehabilitation, at the Department of Clinical Sciences Malmö.

Previous studies suggest that inflammatory proteins can differentiate individuals with long-term pain from healthy controls. It has been suggested that genetic factors may account for up to 50% of the risk of developing chronic pain and that certain proteins correlate with pain intensity in chronic pain.

- I have requested a withdrawal from Epihealth cohort, with the aim of studying low-inflammatory protein markers and genes in long-term (non-malignant) pain. The aim is to find general inflammation parameters and/or potential candidate genes that can identify different forms of long-term pain and whether lifestyle factors affect the pain experience.

The money will be used to write a larger project application and research plan where analysis of proteomic and genomic from the Epihealth database, which mainly consists of middle-aged participants, is compared with (after analysis), older (60 years and older) participants in the ongoing study "Gott Åldrande i Skåne".


Dominik Dietler is another of the six recipients. He is an associate researcher with a PhD in epidemiology at the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and has a strong interest in epidemiological methods to study the effects of environmental and social changes on health, in diverse socio-political contexts.
 
What is you research about?
- In my current research, I’m working on methods for studying the societal and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated public health measures in Sweden. For example, I’m developing modelling approaches for better understanding the effect of human mobility on the transmission patterns of COVID-19. This will allow to assess the usefulness of measure aiming at mobility reduction to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Furthermore, we investigate the effectiveness of COVID-19 testing strategies to reduce COVID-19 transmission.
 
How will you use the money?
- The money provided by the seed money from EpiHealth will allow me to further investigate the potential of currently underutilized mobility and health data for disease modelling during public health emergencies. In addition, a network of national and international collaborators will be consulted to discuss the potential to integrate additional data sources and expand the methodology to other Nordic countries.

The other four who will get funding are:
 
Jonathan Berg
Emelie Ritz Liljedahl
Benjamin Clareus
Jesse Thatcher