Division of Pediatric Endocrinology

Karen Lindsay’s research primarily focuses on nutrition, glycemic control and psychological well-being across the first 1,000 days—from conception until a child is 2 years old. She has an NIH-funded project that investigates the interplay of maternal diet and stress in pregnancy and the impact on gestational glucose-insulin metabolism. She completed a community-based pilot project, a statewide needs assessment of nutrition services and resources for families in the first 1,000 days. 

Lindsay’s ongoing research in this field includes developing and testing mindfulness interventions for pregnant people to improve dietary habits, psychological well-being and glycemic control, as well as an investigation of how prenatal diet and glycemic control influence newborn metabolic health and future cancer risk via the insulin-like growth factor (IGF) axis. The majority of these studies to date have engaged low-income and diverse populations, as her research seeks to find practical solutions to maternal and child health and nutrition in underserved populations.

Lindsay also conducts nutrition and endocrinology research with non-pregnant adult populations. She is co-investigator on a national multisite teaching kitchen intervention trial for adults with obesity and metabolic syndrome, for which she leads the nutrition education classes for the UCI participant cohort. She is also co-investigator on a pilot study to investigate the acceptability and impact of a fasting mimicking diet on glycemic control among Asian Americans with prediabetes.

Lauren Gyllenhammer’s research focuses on factors in early life that can influence the risk for childhood obesity and metabolic dysfunction, particularly among racial and ethnic minority populations. She has an NIH-funded project that focuses on the interplay between biological and psychological processes in early life that impact child adipose development and distribution and risk for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. 

Her work includes an emphasis on the elucidation of cellular mechanisms, particularly focused on mitochondrial biology and the utilization of state-of-the-art imaging techniques. Most recently Gyllenhammer’s work has employed an experimental stem cell culture system derived from human newborn clinical samples, and she is the co-investigator on two NIH-funded projects where she currently oversees the collection and isolation of over 500 newborn hematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cell samples. 

Gyllenhammer also has an NIH-project funded through the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program to investigate changes to mitochondrial content and bioenergetic function in a large epidemiological-sized cohort of 1,200 mother-child dyads. Both the ECHO and stem cell cohorts are enriched for racial and ethnic minority groups, which will inform which factors in early life are the most salient across diverse study populations and within the specific racial and ethnic groups.