Dr. Chihua Li, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences and State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine at the University of Macau (UM), has contributed as a primary researcher to a collaborative study involving Columbia University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among other institutions, when he worked in the US. This study was published as a featured research article in the internationally renowned journal Science on August 8, 2024 (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn4614). The first author and corresponding author of the study is L.H. Lumey, who also has served as Dr. Chihua Li’s doctoral advisor. Dr. Chihua Li is the second author and a key contributor to the study, making significant contributions to the study’s design, data analysis and visualization, manuscript drafting and revision, project management, and others.
The researchers gathered birth records for over 10 million Ukrainians born between 1930 and 1938. Out of these, more than 128,000 were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in the early 2000s. The study found that individuals born in early 1934, whose mothers were pregnant during the peak of the famine, had a significantly higher risk of developing diabetes in adulthood compared to those who were not affected by the famine during their early developmental stages. This indicates that early pregnancy is the most sensitive period for the impact of malnutrition. These findings lay the foundation for further research into the mechanisms behind increased diabetes risk. The study has garnered widespread attention from both the academic community and the public media. Science also published a perspective article (https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adr1425) and a podcast (https://www.science.org/content/podcast/why-humidity-worse-heat-and-studying-lifetime-effects-famine) alongside the article. In the perspective piece, Professors Peter Klimek and Stefan Thurner of the Medical University of Vienna highly praised the study, describing it as having “unprecedented scope and precision.” Additionally, Nature published a news article reporting on the study (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02563-7). Dr. Chihua Li plans to apply epidemiological and interdisciplinary research methods to explore the determinants of health outcomes among the elderly population in Macau and the Greater Bay Area.
