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PhD student
Vanderbilt University
I contributed to data analysis, result interpretation, and manuscript writing in the presented work.
Tea has been studied extensively for its potential beneficial health effects, some of which are believed to be due to the interplay between tea compounds and gut microbiome. Animal studies has showed that tea consumption could improve gut health, but limited evidence could be found in humans. In this prospective cohort study, we examined the associations of regular tea drinking habits, including status, types, amount, and duration, with gut microbiome diversity and composition among 2257 senior Chinese adults, and found that tea drinking may affect β-diversity and abundance of some bacteria related to healthy food pattern and lower BMI, in Chinese men. Our findings provide evidence regarding how tea affects the gut microbiota in a population with regular tea consumption, help understand the role of the gut microbiota in mediating the health benefits of tea, and direct future studies to examine the potential sex-specific effect of tea drinking on gut microbiome.
Currently, I am working on two nutrition-related projects: (1) tea consumption and gut microbiome in urban Chinese population; (2) consumption of ultra-processed food and mortality among general population and among patients with chronic diseases in low-income Americans. My interests focus on nutritional and molecular epidemiology research for prevention of chronic diseases, including cancer, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke. I will continue to work on exploring diet-gut microbiota interactions and identifying dietary and lifestyle factors and novel biomarkers (e.g., gut microbial metabolites) for reducing risk of chronic diseases.