Linglin Xie

The long-term aim of Dr. Xie’s research is to provide or promote strategies that achieve primal, primary and secondary prevention of obesity and its related metabolic complications. It is now well established that in utero and in early life exposure to over-nutrition can disrupt normal growth and development and thus increase the risk of offspring obesity. Therefore, important information/evidence is urgently needed regarding if and how a pre-pregnancy healthy diet strategy, under the guidelines that doctors and registered dietitian nutritionists (RDN) could follow, would be beneficial to obese women on pregnancy outcomes. Unfortunately, although women of childbearing age are suggested to modulate their BMI to a value within the normal range before conception by engaging in lifestyle changes, no evidence-based strategy regarding the optimal duration of the intervention is currently available. Therefore, The recent study focus is to find out if and how different maternal diet intervention before pregnancy would prevent the downstream offspring.

Dr. Xie is also interested in the molecular and genetic basis of heart development and the ontology of congenital heart disease (CHD). CHD is the most common type of birth defect that affect 1% live birth and account for 1/3 of the whole birth defects. Her research has been focused on understanding how important transcription factors and signaling pathways for heart development such as Tbx5, Gata4 and Hh signaling networks in regulating the inflow and outflow tract development.  She is also interested in understanding how maternal obesity or diabetes increase the risk of congenital heart defects of the baby.

[pmid-refs key=”xie” limit=12]

1. Q. Fu, P. Olson, D. Rasmussen, M. Williamson, B. Keith, K. K .Zhang, L. Xie. A Short-Term Transition from a High-Fat Diet to a Normal-Fat Diet Before Pregnancy Exacerbates Female Mouse Offspring Obesity. Int J Obes (Lond). 2015 Nov 26. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2015.236.
2. Y. Zhou and L. Xie. High Fat Diet Mouse Model in the Study of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Am J Digest Dis; 2(1): 60-65, 2015
3. Q. Fu, K.K. Zhang, L. Xie. A meta-analysis of case-control studies of high-fat diet and colorectal cancer. Am J Digest Dis;1(2):127-135, 2014