This population-based, probabilistically sampled study in the five main cities of Colombia aims to explore the associations between food and nutrient intake, and variables like place of consumption, geographical region, socioeconomic status, sex and age group, as well as describe and analyze the dietary patterns prevalent among urban Colombians. The study also takes basic anthropometric and laboratory measures aimed at estimating the urban prevalence of overweight and obesity, abdominal obesity, prediabetes and diabetes.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the top cause of death worldwide, and one of the central risk factors for CHD is high blood levels of LDL cholesterol. LDL cholesterol has a complex metabolism in which one of the players is PCSK9, a protein that induces the degradation of hepatic LDL receptors and in doing so modulates the concentrations of circulating LDL. Aptamers are single-strand DNA or RNA oligonucleotides whose tridimensional structure confers them the ability to bind to target molecules with great affinity and specificity. The aim of this project is to identify and select a pair of specific aptamers against PCSK9, which can be used to develop an inexpensive assay for plasma PCSK9.

An important fraction of patients with severe hypertriglyceridemia or pancreatitis not due to biliary obstruction or alcohol consumption, may bear pathogenic variants in genes related to the synthesis, maturation or activity of lipoprotein lipase (e.g. LPL, APOC2, APOA5, GPIHBP1 or LMF1).

This study aims to identify such variants in Colombian population, a question of importance also for other Latin American countries.

Peroxisome proliferator activated receptors (PPARs) are ligand-activated nuclear transcription factors that modulate the expression of multiple target genes through their binding to specific response elements in the regulating regions of such genes. PPAR beta/delta is the type of PPAR most extensively distributed throughout the body, and fatty acids are some of their known ligands. With this background, the aim of this project is to assess the effect of short-chain fatty acids on multiple aspects of macrophage biology, and to explore to what extent such effects are mediated by PPAR beta/delta.