Dr Mohammad Talaei, MD MPH PhD

Profile

I am an epidemiologist with a special interest in the aetiology of diseases. My background is in clinical medicine and public health; I gained my MD from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences (Iran) and my Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Birmingham (UK). I was trained as a nutritional epidemiologist and attained my PhD from the National University of Singapore (Singapore). My research is based on large-scale cohort studies, and I have experience working on various populations. From 2004 to 2013, I was the Director and co-PI of the Isfahan Cohort Study (ICS), a prospective population-based cohort study about risk factors of cardiovascular disease. I have conducted research into the role of diet in the development of cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and impaired cognitive function. Since I joined the Queen Mary University of London in 2018, I have been studying the role of diet in childhood asthma and lung function with a particular interest in gene-diet interaction. In response to the outbreak of coronavirus disease, we established a population-based cohort study (COVIDENCE-UK) to study Covid-19, and it has also become a new field of my research. I work as a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Prevention, Detection and Diagnosis, Wolfson Institute of Population Health.

Research

Research Interests:

The ultimate goal of my research it to identify opportunities for the prevention of chronic conditions taking into account genetic factors. My current research concerns:

• Shared developmental origins of lung function and cognitive function
• Nutritional epidemiology, particularly the role of diet in childhood asthma and lung function
• Gene-diet interaction, the interplay between genetic polymorphisms and dietary factors on respiratory outcomes
• Risk factors of Covid-19 infection and the immune response to it

Publications

1. Talaei M, Hughes DA, Mahmoud O, Emmett PM, Granell R, Guerra S, Shaheen SO. Dietary intake of vitamin A, lung function, and incident asthma in childhood. Eur Respir J. 2021 Sep 24:2004407. doi: 10.1183/13993003.04407-2020. 
   
   
2. Talaei M, Sdona E, Calder PC, Jones LR, Emmett PM, Granell R, Bergström A, Melén E, Shaheen SO. Intake of n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in childhood, FADS genotype, and incident asthma. Eur Respir J. 2021 Sep 2;58(3):2003633. 
   
   
3. Holt H, Talaei M, Greenig M, Zenner D, Symons J, Relton C, Young KS, Davies MR, Thompson KN, Ashman J, Rajpoot SS, Kayyale AA, El Rifai S, Lloyd PJ, Jolliffe D, Timmis O, Finer S, Iliodromiti S, Miners A, Hopkinson NS, Alam B, Lloyd-Jones G, Dietrich T, Chapple I, Pfeffer PE, McCoy D, Davies G, Lyons RA, Griffiths C, Kee F, Sheikh A, Breen G, Shaheen SO, Martineau AR. Risk factors for developing COVID-19: a population-based longitudinal study (COVIDENCE UK). Thorax. 2021 Nov 30:thoraxjnl-2021-217487. 
   
   
4. Talaei M, Wang YL, Yuan JM, Pan A, Koh WP. Meat, dietary heme iron and risk of type 2 diabetes: The Singapore Chinese Health Study. Am J Epidemiol.  2017 Oct;186(7): 824–833. 
   
   
5. Pan A, Wang Y, Talaei M, Hu FB. Relation of Smoking with Total Mortality and Cardiovascular Events Among Patients With Diabetes Mellitus: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review. Circulation. 2015 Nov 10;132(19):1795-804.