Cardiometabolic Health r esearch u nit

Prof Tandi Matsha matshat@cput.ac.za

Mr Shafick Hassan hassans@cput.ac.za

over 5000 Bellville South residents will benefit from a multimillion rand diabetes study tracking the development of the disease. The community was selected for its proximity to CPUT’s Bellville campus location of a clinic specially developed for the study. The three-year project will monitor the development of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Participants are eager to be involved because they are given regular health screen checks, including a dental examination and weight and blood checks. Head of the programme, Prof Tandi Matsha, said, “Many of the people attending may not know that they have diabetes, and this type of service alerts them to possible health problems. Diabetes is increasing all over the world, with 80% of the increase happening in low to middle income countries like South africa.”

The diabetes and cardiovascular study is a r8.25 million research project awarded by the SaMrC.

The mission of the Cardiometabolic Health Research Unit is to create an environment for collaborative solutions in order to better understand the underlying reasons for the increases in diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, with the goal of improving cardiometabolic health in South Africa and beyond.

In this unit, the research cluster employs an integrated research programme focusing on obesity, cardiovascular risk, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney diseases and diabetes. The unit strives to accelerate research advances by employing innovative, multidisciplinary intra- and inter-institutional collaborative approaches aimed at improving cardiometabolic health through translation to healthy lifestyles, early diagnosis, and cost-effective prevention and management of these diseases. Much of the group’s work comprises community-based studies, specifically Cape Town’s Bellville South.

The research unit is involved in studies including periodontal diseases, immune activation, hepatic steatosis, Vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency, pollution, and genetic and epigenetic novel risk factors for cardiometabolic traits in mixed ancestry South Africans, funded by the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) Flagship Programme, the NRF and CPUT.

Our research is broad, spanning epidemiology to discovery-based laboratory science. Much of the work is interdisciplinary, integrating with the Non-Communicable Diseases Research Unit (NCDRU), SAMRC; the Department of Pathology and the Department of Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, SU; the Department of Dentistry, UWC; and the South African National Bioinformatics Institute. International collaboration partners include the Centre for Cardiovascular Genetics, British Heart Foundation Laboratories; Institute of Cardiovascular Science, University College London; and the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, McMaster University, Canada.

Major achievements during 2014 include the graduation of three doctoral and one master’s fellow. The unit published 15 manuscripts and members of the group presented research findings at the 2nd African Diabetes Congress in Cameroon.