METS-Sleep – Sleep, Gut Microbiota, and Cardiometabolic Risk Across the Epidemiologic Transition

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Solutions for Medicine

UWI SODECO

2019 - 2023

Project Overview

As countries transition from infectious disease to chronic disease burdens, lifestyle factors such as sleep timing and meal habits are becoming increasingly relevant in shaping cardiometabolic (CM) health outcomes. The METS-Sleep study explores how circadian misalignment—the mismatch between biological and social clocks—impacts obesity, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose levels across five African-origin populations.

Project Details

Key Objectives

Evaluate how sleep and meal timing influence cardiometabolic outcomes in diverse African-origin populations at different stages of the epidemiologic transition.
Explore the relationship between gut microbiota and circadian rhythms, including sleep and meal timing, and their effect on long-term obesity and CM risk.
Conduct faecal microbiota transplant (FMT) experiments in mice to test whether gut microbiota from late sleepers promote greater susceptibility to obesity and metabolic dysfunction.

Scientific Rationale & Significance

Urbanization and night-shift work contribute to circadian misalignment, especially in people with a “late chronotype.”
Chronotype differences, especially later sleep and eating patterns, are linked to increased risk for diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome.
The gut microbiota may mediate this relationship, altering how the body processes food and responds to circadian disruption.
This study is the first of its kind to explore these dynamics across low-, middle-, and high-income countries in a comparative, longitudinal framework.

Study Design at a Glance

Populations Studied:

1,000 adults (200 each from Ghana, South Africa, Jamaica, the Seychelles, and the US)

Methodologies Include:

Sleep monitoring via wrist actigraphy
24-hour food recall for meal timing
Measurement of 5 CM risk markers: abdominal fat, fasting glucose, triglycerides, blood pressure, HDL cholesterol
Gut microbiota analysis from faecal samples
5-year retrospective weight change data

Expected Outcomes

Identify how modern sleep and eating behaviours contribute to metabolic disease across socioeconomic contexts.
Determine whether gut dysbiosis associated with late sleep timing increases CM risk.
Provide mechanistic insight into how microbiota from different chronotypes affect weight gain and metabolic outcomes in experimental models.
Inform public health strategies aimed at reducing CM disease risk in transitioning societies.

Conclusion

METS-Sleep will advance our understanding of how modern work patterns, sleep behaviour, and dietary timing affect the microbiome and metabolic health across globally diverse populations. This project contributes to identifying biological and behavioural targets to prevent obesity and related chronic conditions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, adapting to rapid economic change.