Investigating Metabolic Markers and Virtual Data Warehouses

By Carla Todaro, MD, from the IARS, AUA and SOCCA 2019 Annual Meetings*

The AUA Scientific Advisory Board Oral Session II, moderated by Meghan Lane-Fall, MD, MSHP, highlighted cutting-edge research from investigators through engaging oral presentations. Two of those researchers focused on novel circulating metabolic markers (Stephen Ellison, MD, PhD) and a distributed research network virtual data warehouse (Seshadri Mudumbai, MD).

The first presenter was Dr. Stephen Ellison, from Duke University Medical Center, with a research project entitled, “Novel Circulating Metabolic Markers Improve Discrimination of Metabolic Health Independent of Weight.”

The presentation clearly showed the correlation between metabolites and the association to adverse cardiovascular disease and negative health effects. The metabolites studied, including MH, GlycA1, BCAA, SCDA, HMSP and LDL, can predict independently the risk of cardiovascular disease, overall and across different BMI categories. These results indicate the potential for metabolites values as biomarkers for the risk for cardiovascular disease and they may serve as more granular receptor of metabolic health.

The second speaker was Dr. Seshadri Mudumbai from Stanford University with the topic “Implementation of a Distributed Research Network Virtual Data Warehouse for a Multi-Center Observational Study.” Dr. Mudumbai was awarded a Junior Faculty Research Award for this abstract submission to the AUA 2019 Annual Meeting.

His presentation highlighted the importance of developing a pragmatic clinical trial infrastructure implying efficiency, analysis, information generation, and data control.

 A distributed research network with development of virtual data warehouse includes these key functions:

• distribution of inquiries through a network software
• execute the queries against the local data
• return aggregate results
• simple menu-driven queries and complex queries

Evidently, generating evidence and network can improve patient outcomes and the creation of frameworks allows access to effects.

Drs. Ellison and Mudumbai’s e-Posters are available for viewing at https://tinyurl.com/AM19eposters.

*Coverage from the AUA SAB Oral Session II at the AUA 2019 Annual Meeting, moderated by Meghan Lane-Fall, MD