Brain-gut imaging
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing MR Imaging techniques to explore the brain-gut axis to food intake in people with obesity and healthy normal weight participants.
IRAS ID
261806
Contact name
Sally Eldeghaidy
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Nottingham
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
145-1811, Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences Research Ethics committee
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Obesity affects more than 850 million people worldwide, and is a major risk factor for many serious health conditions. The mechanism of neural interactions between brain and gut in the regulation of food intake is complex and remain poorly understood in obese individuals. Understanding the neurological underpinnings for appetite and body weight in humans will help to pave the way to treatment and prevention. The aim of this project is to develop novel MR imaging methods to combine for the first time brain and gut measurements in a single MRI scan session. The MR imaging method will then be applied to explore the neural interactions between the brain and gut in healthy and obese cohorts in response to a fat meal and an iso-caloric carbohydrate meal that are directly infused in the stomach using naso-gastric tube. Healthy volunteers (between 18-45 years), male and female will be recruited. Participants will be grouped into normal weight (19 Kg/m2>BMI <25 Kg/m2) and obese (BMI> 30 Kg/m2) cohort.During the screening phase, participants will be asked for their general health condition, and their eligibility to undergo an MRI scan, and they will be blood screened to confirm they are not diabetic or dyslipidemia patients. Eligible participants will then be invited to take part in the study. We are aiming to scan 40 participants in total (20 normal weight and 20 obese). MRI scanning will be performed on the wide-bore Phillips 3T research scanner at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre. Participants will be invited into two MRI visits. In each scan day, brain and gut scans will be collected at baseline and at different time points following infusion of the test-meals. Meals will be randomised across participants. Blood samples and satiety scores will be collected to measure gut hormones at baseline and post-drink.
REC name
N/A
REC reference
N/A