Development of the Soldier Health Promotion to Examine and Reduce Health Disparities (SHPERHD) Project Coordinating Center: challenges and opportunities within a university/community partnership.

The Soldier Health Promotion to Examine and Reduce Health Disparities (SHPERHD) Project was designed to be a partnership between the Institute for Partnerships to Eliminate Health Disparities at the University of South Carolina and the Fort Jackson United States Army Base located in Columbia, South Carolina. SHPERHD Project researchers are studying problems related to obesity and weight management, musculoskeletal injuries and infection, and mental health issues during recruitment, basic training, and post-deployment. In order to successfully develop targeted interventions to prevent and lower the incidence of injury, promote healthy nutrition, and decrease mental health issues, at the same time also reducing disparity gaps, the SHPERHD Project comprises a professional, technical, and administrative staff with specific competence in the operation of a Coordinating Center to handle the wide variety of areas related to military studies.

Dietary, physical activity, and lifestyle behaviors of rural African American South Carolina children.

Overweight and obese children continue to be a growing problem, and differences exist, especially among racial and ethnic groups. Even though a poor diet and lack of physical activity are attributable factors to being overweight among children, indications exists that geographic location may also be important. In rural areas in the United States, childhood obesity is often higher than the national average.

Does the mitochondrial genome play a role in the etiology of Alzheimer's disease?

We report here the analyses of complete mtDNA coding region sequences from more than 270 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and normal controls to determine if inherited mtDNA mutations contribute to the etiology of AD. The AD patients and normal individuals were carefully screened and drawn from two populations of European descent in an effort to avoid spurious effects due to local population anomalies. Overall, there were no significant haplogroup associations in the combined AD and normal control sequence sets.

Sequence analysis of the mitochondrial genomes from Dutch pedigrees with Leber hereditary optic neuropathy.

The complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences for 63 Dutch pedigrees with Leber hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) were determined, 56 of which carried one of the classic LHON mutations at nucleotide (nt) 3460, 11778, or 14484. Analysis of these sequences indicated that there were several instances in which the mtDNAs were either identical or related by descent. The most striking example was a haplogroup J mtDNA that carried the 14484 LHON mutation.

Reduced-median-network analysis of complete mitochondrial DNA coding-region sequences for the major African, Asian, and European haplogroups.

The evolution of the human mitochondrial genome is characterized by the emergence of ethnically distinct lineages or haplogroups. Nine European, seven Asian (including Native American), and three African mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups have been identified previously on the basis of the presence or absence of a relatively small number of restriction-enzyme recognition sites or on the basis of nucleotide sequences of the D-loop region. We have used reduced-median-network approaches to analyze 560 complete European, Asian, and African mtDNA coding-region sequences from unrelated individuals to develop a more complete understanding of sequence diversity both within and between haplogroups.

A high frequency of mtDNA polymorphisms in HeLa cell sublines.

The complete mtDNA sequences from the uncloned "founder" HeLa cells and from five sublines have been determined. These sequences all carry a common "core" of 38 single basepair alterations relative to the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence (CRS). The HeLa mitochondrial genome is of African descent and it is a member of the African L3 haplogroup.