Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kaumudi Joshipura
Graduate Student Mentor: Priyaa Shanmugham, BDS, MPH
Program Participants: Nabihah Kara and David Seng

Project Title: The Association between Periodontal Disease and Heart Disease.

Project Description: In this research project, biomarkers that are known to be indicators of CVD were used to quantitatively measure heart disease. C-reactive protein (CRP) and intracellular adhesion molecules (ICAM) are the biomarkers that acted as the outcome variables in the different statistical models. ICAM is the primary biomarker evaluated in this study and other factors that may influence the models include age, gender, smoke, and race. These covariates were taken into account to produce two statistical models that closely described the association between periodontal disease and CVD. This study was conducted using a total of 66 subjects. Biomarkers ICAM and CRP were measured following the collection of blood samples from each participant. With the data collected from the sample, one model attempts to describe the ICAM level while the other model estimates CRP. Methods utilized in this study included descriptive, logistic regression, univariate and multivariate linear regression analyses.

Nabihah, Priyaa, Dr. Joshipura, and David

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Yi Li
Graduate Student Mentor: Alane Izu, PhD candidate

Program Participants: Sabrina Khan and Ijeoma Okeigwe

Project Title: Clinical Trials for Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinomas (HNSCCs)

Project Description: Patients with oral premalignant lesions (OPLs) are diagnosed with head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) at a rate of 10-44% over 5-10 years. Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is progressively overexpressed in HNSCC carcinogenesis, by up to 150-fold in invasive cancers, and is associated with many aspects of the malignant phenotype, including suppression of apoptosis, angiogenesis, inflammation, immune response and
invasiveness. Specific inhibition of COX-2 suppresses tumorigenesis in
vitro and in vivo and thus represents a potential strategy for the preventing HNSCC in high-risk patients. A pilot phase II study was designed to investigate the effects of the COX-2 inhibitor, celecoxib, on surrogate endpoint biomarkers (SEBs) in subjects with OPLs. Oral mucosa prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) expression in post- versus pre-treatment samples was chosen as the primary endpoint. Students explored the effect of Celecoxib in decreasing prostaglandin level in patients with oral premalignant lesions. They used a linear mixed model to see whether or not use of Celecoxib lowered the prostaglandin E2 level or not.

Sabrina, Alane, and Ijeoma

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Dr. Brian Gibbs
Graduate Mentor: Binta Beard, MS
Program Participants: Morjoriee White and Ugonna Ijeoma

Project Title: Disparities Reduction Profile in Health Status and Health Care

Project Description: Students examined state level efforts to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities using two indices, the Disparity Reduction Profile (DRP) and the Disparity Index (DI). For the DRP students measured five variables to determine state level effort. Policy and Planning (Is there state legislation addressing Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (REHD)?), Organizational Structur (Does the state have an Office of Minority Health?), Evaluation and Monitoring (How many non-white variables are used to document race in vital statistics?), Legislation and Regulations (Are there mandated regulations or legislatures in place to have HMO language interpreters?) and Leadership (Was health disparities mentioned in teh annual state of state addresses?). This data was collected and put into an index.

Morjoriee and Ugonna

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Christoph Lange
Graduate Student Mentor: Amy Murphy, PhD candidate
Program Participants: Eric Figueroa Perez and Fatumo Guled

Project Title: Genetic Determinants of Alcoholism through Family-Based Association Testing (FBAT)

Project Description: This project used Family-Based Association Testing (FBAT) to investigate genetic determinants of alcoholism. FBATs can generally be defined as a class of tests that use family data to examine whether genetic variation across individuals may be used to explain corresponding phenotypic (or disease) variation. Students applied these tests to the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcholism (COGA), which contains genetic and phenotype information on approximately 1600 family members. The goal of the project was to identify any significant genetic markers of alcoholism (or surrogate phenotypic traits). Students conduced a literature review on etiology, prevalence, and diagnosis of alcoholism, and current research involving genetic association testing of this disease. They used PBAT software package to analyze of the COGA dataset by selecting the appropriate tests in PBAT, using the FBAT screening process to find the most promising SNPs for analysis and reported any significant findings and interpretation of results.

Fatumo and Eric

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Elizabeth Barbeau
Graduate Student Mentor: Reginald Tucker-Seeley, MS
Program Participants: Sharrelle Barber and Dominique Hill

Project Title: Effects of social and physical occupational hazards on interleukin-6 (IL-6) secretion in a in a racially and ethnically diverse sample.

Project Description: There is very little published data reporting the effects of social and physical occupational hazards on interleukin-6 (IL-6) secretion in a racially and ethnically diverse sample. The project data collection, albeit small in size, represents an opportunity to establish leadership in this emerging area.Two primary aims will converge in this proposal. First, students attempted to probe whether chronic exposure to social hazards in the occupational environment promote racial/ethnic differences in the secretion of IL-6, an immune marker that appears to enhance chronic disease morbidity and mortality among some groups.1, 2 Second, students worked on enhancing the research group's capacity to collect biological specimens in community-based research. Thus they studied methods to implement a pilot protocol to sample the proinflammatory cytokine IL-6 in an on-going study of cancer-related disparities. This proposal is timely given the DF/HCC's recent efforts to strengthen its portfolio of research in the area of racial/ethnic disparities in cancer-related outcomes.

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Steven Gortmaker.
Graduate Mentor: Brisa Sanchez, PhD candidate
Program Participants: Jennifer Bonds and Dominic Farris

Project Title: The Relationship between the Density of Fast Food Restaurants in a neighborhood and neighborhood characteristics

Project Description: Restaurant types affect the quality of neighborhood food environments. Local food environments affect the diets of those who live in the neighborhood (Morland et al. 2002). The importance of diet is emphasized by the increase in the prevalence of obesity in the US; the prevalence of obesity, however, is disproportionate by demographic characteristics. The objective of this study is to examine the how the density of fast food restaurants in a neighborhood varies with neighborhood characteristics in Chicago. In this study, a neighborhood is characterized as a census tract.The number of fast food restaurants per census tract was collected as part of a study which investigated clustering of fast food restaurants near schools (Austin et al. 2005). Students used descriptive statistics, poisson regression and geographical programming to plot the restaurant
locations.

Brisa, Domonic, Jennifer, and Dr. Gortmaker