Nutrition

Mohammad Khaled at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the US will test whether eliminating H. pylori infection in pregnant women permits the replenishment of iron stores via iron and folate supplements. Eradicating this common bacteria in expectant mothers might thus facilitate treatment of maternal anemia and reduce delivery of underweight babies.

Shirley Luckhart and colleagues at the University of California Davis in the U.S. will develop and test in a mouse model a simple, safe, and cost-effective immune- enhancing nutritional supplement that could reverse and prevent intestinal damage thought to be cause by malarial infection. This intervention could improve immunity to bacterial infections that co-occur in children also suffering from malaria.

Thomas Jue, Frederic A. Troy and Youngran Chung at the University of California Davis in the U.S. will use a mouse model to track the biodistribution of sialic acid - abundant in human breast milk and shown in animal studies to improve cognition - as a first step in understanding the long-term cognitive advantages of breastfeeding and potentially developing a sialic acid supplement for infants to promote cognitive development.

John Pietsch of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the U.S. proposes to develop rugged, compact, easy-to-use bioelectrical impedance analysis instruments based on a smart phone platform to assess nutritional status in mothers, infants, and children. These instruments will allow minimally trained health workers to detect malnutrition prior to symptoms and determine the effectiveness of nutritional interventions.

Mark Styczynski of the Georgia Institute of Technology in the U.S. proposes to create portable, low-cost, bacteria-based genetic circuits to measure blood micronutrient levels without requiring sophisticated instrumentation to perform or read the test. This would provide an inexpensive, rapid method to diagnose nutrition status in the field.