Federal funding fuels key research at Harvard Chan School on lowering risk of cancer, heart disease, early death
The research described in this article was made possible in part by federal funding awarded to Harvard Chan School scientists in the interest of protecting and promoting health for all. The future of research like this is now in question due to the government’s actions to terminate large numbers of grants and contracts and freeze funding for scientific inquiry and innovation across Harvard University.
For more than a century, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health faculty have conducted groundbreaking research that has led directly to vaccines, treatments, policies, and programs that have saved lives by the millions, in the U.S. and around the world.
In this installment of our series highlighting high-impact research, we describe how two long-term cohort studies based at Harvard Chan School and supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have helped shed light on lowering the risk of cancer, other serious diseases, and premature death.
Longest-running health study of men provides key insights on how to prevent disease
“Our study—the largest and longest-running prospective study solely on men—has given us the opportunity to study everything from cancer to cardiovascular disease to neurologic diseases in this cohort.” – Lorelei Mucci, professor of epidemiology
The Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) began nearly 40 years ago with a cohort of more than 50,000 male health professionals. Health professionals were recruited because of their detailed and valid knowledge about their health as well as their willingness to take part in a long-term health study. Over the years, the data produced by the study has been used by thousands of researchers at Harvard and around the globe to look at the impacts of diet and lifestyle factors on a range of diseases, as well as the biological markers that underlie disease development.
For example, data from the study has shown that people who eat a healthy, sustainable diet may substantially lower their risk of premature death as well as their environmental impact; that adhering to certain healthy dietary patterns may help men with a high genetic risk of prostate cancer significantly lower their risk of lethal disease; and that people who incorporate olive oil into their everyday diet may decrease their risk of dementia-related death.
“Our study is so unique in that it’s been going on for four decades,” said Lorelei Mucci, a co-principal investigator of the HPFS. “The length of follow-up that we have allows us to capture information about factors whose prevalence has changed over time, such as physical activity or environmental exposures. In addition, it has allowed us to study novel factors in the population such as the COVID-19 pandemic or a planetary health diet pattern.”
Mucci said that study participants have been quite steadfast in periodically providing health information about their lifestyle and diet. Every two years, study participants fill out questionnaires about disease occurrences and factors such as smoking, physical activity, and medications taken. Every four years, they answer questionnaires with detailed dietary information.
From the original cohort, 16,000 of the men are still alive. “Ninety percent of our participants responded to and completed our last questionnaire,” Mucci noted. “These are people in their eighties, nineties, and some are even in their hundreds. They’re just so dedicated to this study.”
Having access to this cohort for such a long time provides a truly unique opportunity, Mucci noted. Participants’ blood samples were first collected in 1995; study investigators now hope to collect their blood samples again. “We are at a prime place to ask questions about healthy aging,” she said. “How is it that these individuals are not only still alive, but that many are thriving into older age? Our combination of detailed information and biospecimens allows us to investigate factors over a lifespan that can lead a person to healthy aging.”
Mucci noted that the HPFS—together with other cohort studies at Harvard—”has been a key resource for our doctoral students, our postdoctoral fellows, and for early-career faculty.” But she is worried about whether the work can continue, because the main grant supporting the study’s infrastructure—long funded by the National Cancer Institute—was terminated by the Trump administration. The grant has supported everything “from sending out participant questionnaires to hiring programmers to manage the data to supporting the work of our dietitians, Mucci said.
“We want to be able to continue to follow the participants, to maintain our biorepositories, and to support the infrastructure needed to ensure rigorousness of the data,” she said.”
Understanding the link between oral health and cancer
“NIH funding for the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study is essential to our ability to investigate the relationship between oral health and gastrointestinal cancer, and to study how we may improve early detection and intervention.” – Mingyang Song, associate professor of clinical epidemiology and nutrition
Could oral hygiene help reduce your risk of cancer? Yes, according to research from Mingyang Song.
Song studies cancer epidemiology, with a focus on nutrition and the body’s many microbiomes. He has published research on how the mouth microbiome may play a role in gastrointestinal (GI) cancer risk. One study found that people with a history of gum disease have a 52% greater chance of developing stomach cancer compared with those without gum disease, and that losing two or more teeth raised stomach cancer risk by 33%. Another study found that people with gum disease had a 17% greater chance than those without gum disease of developing a serrated polyp, which can lead to colon cancer.
“These studies provide novel data for the oral-gut link,” Song said. They also carry a straightforward public health message: Investments in oral health are investments in overall health.
For his research, Song has relied on data from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS) and Health Professionals Follow-up Study, two decades-old cohort studies, co-led by Harvard Chan School researchers, that have collected biological samples and health data from women and men across the country. Both studies recently lost their National Institutes of Health funding, which has kept them running since they were launched in the 1980s.
Song hopes to continue investigating how oral hygiene may help prevent cancer. “We had been planning on using new oral microbiome samples through the NHS and applying for additional NIH funding to power new research to identify oral microbial features important to early detection and interception of GI cancer,” he said.
