Projects
The 'Maternal Nutrition and Offspring’s Epigenome' (MANOE) study: link with childhood obesity KU Leuven
Obesity is increasing exponentially. Today, 20% of the school-aged children are overweight. The risk of becoming obese is influenced not only by genetic and adult life-style factors, but also by nutrition during pregnancy and infancy. This phenomenon is called metabolic programming. Animal studies have shown that a diet rich in methyl-group donors (e.g. folic-acid, folate, methionine, betaine, and choline) during pregnancy can reduce the risk ...
Combating Childhood Obesity Ghent University
Childhood obesity is a serious health problem in our society. We aim at an integrated approach to change their lifestyle by developing a user-friendly smartphone app for collecting data directly from the target group and develop an individually tailored intervention to reduce obesity and increase wellbeing in children.
An unhealthy eating behaviour of both children and their parents are a significant contribution to the worldwide ...
Multifactorial evidence based appraoch using behavioural models in understanding and promoting fun, healthy food, play and policy for the prevention of obesity in early childhood Ghent University
The European ToyBox-project aims to prevent overweight and obesity in preschool children between 4 and 6 years old. An intervention will be executed in 6 European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Poland and Spain), during the school year 2012-2013. The intervention has four target behaviours: increasing physical activity, decreasing sedentary behaviour, more water and less sugar-sweetened beverages and healthy snacks.
Combating Childhood Obesity Ghent University
Biomechanics of childhood obesity: implications for the musculoskeletal system and role of physical exercise KU Leuven
There is evidence indicating that the presence of overweight/obesity induces alterations in movement biomechanics, body posture and movement competence of children and adolescents, with severe health consequences for their musculoskeletal system. Physical exercise could be a promising treatment to reverse all these alterations in children with overweight/obesity and therefore prevent the onset of associated musculoskeletal disorders, however, ...
STOP : Science and Technology in chilhood Obesity Policy Hasselt University
On the Interplay among Psychosocial, Biological, and Medical Factors in Different Populations: Charting Developmental Interdependencies and Trajectories from Childhood through Emerging Adulthood KU Leuven
The long-term purpose of the research program is to expand our understanding of the various processes linking psychosocial functioning to several physical and medical parameters from childhood through emerging adulthood in different community and clinical populations. Such a developmental focus on the interface between normative psychosocial issues and physical or medical outcomes is of critical importance in understanding why certain ...
The role of adipose tissue hypoxia in obesity and obstructive sleep apnea. University of Antwerp
Influence of sex steroids on bone mineralization and maturation, (pre)pubertal growth and body composition in late childhood and adolescence in males. Ghent University
Besides the influence of the individual sex steroid levels we want to investigate the influence of the estrogen/androgen ratio in determining the tempo of bone mineralization and maturation, growth spurt and body composition. We therefore will investigate those parameters during (pre)puberty, in males presenting conditions with suppressed aromatization (ideopatic osteoprosis) as well as in males with increased aromatization (obesity).