MRC Epidemiology UnitThe latest news from the MRC Epidemiology Unit
Welcome to the epigram 2025 issue 5, the quarterly newsletter from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
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Finding equilibrium
From walking to school to reformulating menus, we find out the positive impact our research can have our health.
School street closures encourages more active forms of commuting
Have you noticed a school street closure in your neighbourhood?
Schemes restricting parking and access outside schools at drop-off and pick-up times have proliferated across the UK. A team led by Professor Jenna Panter at the University of Cambridge, and involving the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust, evaluated the impact of such schemes on travel to school, using data collected routinely at nearly 500 schools across England and Scotland.
They found that active travel to school in schools with schemes was 6% higher than comparative schools without. All active means of commuting – walking, cycling, scooting and skating – increased, with the greatest increase seen for “park and stride,” where people drive for some of the journey and walk for the rest.
This shift was driven largely by a decrease in use of motor vehicles, with a 5% decrease in the proportion of children travelling to school only by private car.
The authors suggest that school street closures are broadly successful and support the creation of schemes in areas where this is feasible.
Read our blog
A balancing act …
Preventing weight gain is more achievable through dieting and exercise combined, according to new research from the MRC Epidemiology Unit.
Visceral fat in the abdomen is particularly responsive to this joint impact and has been linked to a higher risk of diseases such as type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and heart disease since it’s stored around the organs.
Published in JAMA Network Open, the paper, Concurrent Changes in Diet Quality and Physical Activity and Association with Adiposity in Adults, followed more than 7,200 participants in their 40s and 50s from the Fenland study for over seven years. The quantity and distribution of the participants’ body fat was measured using DEXA, a low-intensity X-ray scan that can distinguish body fat, bone composition, and muscle and lean mass across the whole body.
The researchers are Shayan Aryannezhad, Fumiaki Imamura, Emanuella De Lucia Rolfe, Simon Griffin Nick Wareham, Soren Brage, and Nita Forouhi.
Read our blog
Counting the cost of calories
Since 2022 the UK government has required restaurants to label their meals’ calories; policymakers had hoped this would incentivise the reformulation of meals to contain fewer calories. However, researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit have found there has been only a 2% reduction in the energy content of food available since then.
The research, led by Dr Michael Essman and Professor Jean Adams, analysed Menutracker data collected for 31,045 menu items from 78 restaurant chains in September 2021, and again a year later in September 2022 after the regulations had come into force. And found that many restaurants were simply swapping some higher calorie menu items for slightly lower calorie items, rather than reformulating existing menu items.
Reelin’ in the year …
Join us as we trawl through a year of research successes!
An NIHR funded study published in January, and led by researchers from the MRC Epidemiology Unit, analysed the impact of starting work on health-related behaviours in data from over 3,000 participants aged between 16 and 30 years in The UK Household Longitudinal Study, which found that working from home appeared to be associated with an initial decrease in physical activity, equivalent to about half an hour of moderate activity per day.
In February, the Lancet Countdown’s Inaugural Report on Health and Climate Change for Small Island States was published – led by Global Diet and Activity Research (GDAR) Network’s Dr Georgiana Gordon-Strachan, Director of the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit at the Caribbean Institute for Health Research (CAIHR), University of the West Indies.
For March we zoom in on a study published in BMJ Open, which highlighted how London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) is transforming children’s journeys to school, by making streets safer, and improving perceptions of air quality. The work is part of the Children’s Health in London and Luton (CHILL) Study.
Lights, camera, action! April was a busy telly month for the Unit, with BBC Look East reporting on the development of a blood test which can detect frontotemporal dementia long before symptoms appear. Our BioRepository, which processes and stores the blood samples from the ON-FIRE study, featured in the report.
April also featured a report by ITV Anglia on a new paper by Dr Shayan Aryannezhad and colleagues. Dr Aryannezhad and EPIC-Norfolk study volunteers were interviewed about new findings from the long-running study which show it’s never too late to make healthy changes to reduce the risk of developing heart disease or type 2 diabetes.
Researchers fromQueen Mary University of London’s Precision Healthcare University Research Institute, the Berlin Institute of Health, and the MRC Epidemiology Unit published a paper in May suggesting that factors such where people work and live, their education, finances, access to resources, and lifestyle contribute to the health differences experienced between the sexes. The authors analysed data on the relative protein abundances of nearly 6,000 human proteins in blood samples from the Fenland and UK Biobank studies. They suggest these factors should be explored further and considered more when exploring sex differences in health.
The latest UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) report was published in June. The report covered 2019-2023 and found that key dietary recommendations including those for fruit & veg, vitamin D, fibre, folate and iodine are still not being met by many in the population. The report also found clear inequalities, with those in the most deprived areas tending to have poorer diets.
The NDNS 2019-2023 was carried out carried out jointly by the MRC Epidemiology Unit and National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). Read more on our blog.
July was a busy month for Dr Haneen Khreis as she presented her research findings at the World Health Organization’s second global conference on air pollution and health
A new analysis of data from almost 30 million people in 51 studies across Asia, Australia, Europe and North America highlighted the role air pollution – including that coming from car exhaust emissions – plays in increasing the risk of dementia. The research was funded by the European Research Council (ERC).
Watch Dr Khreis presenting these results at the WHO conference.
August was the month we highlighted the steps taken towards fitness. New research led by Unit scientists showed the impact of NHS Active 10 app. It was designed to encourage people to become more active and was found to immediately increase users’ amount of brisk and non-brisk walking. For many people their activity levels gradually declined over time. However, even after 30 months those who still used the app were more active than they had been beforehand. The research was published in npj Digital Medicine; and you can find out more about the study in our news blog.
The Planetary Health Diet was a highlight of the Unit’s research in September. Researchers found that a diet high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables and low in animal products and sugary drinks is more sustainable and linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes than a diet that skimps on plant foods and is rich in items such as red meat. Read the PLOS Medicine paper by Solomon Sowah, Fumiaki Imamura, Daniel Borch Ibsen, Pablo Monsivais, Nick Wareham, and Nita Forouhi.
The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission report was published in October. It warned that global food systems are breaching planetary limits; the report also outlined a pathway to a healthier and more sustainable future. Professor Nita Forouhi of the MRC Epidemiology Unit was a commissioner for the 2025 EAT-Lancet Report.
In November, the Unit’s Dr Marie Spreckley launched a new research project which explores the lived experiences of people using next-generation weight management medications.
The AMPLIFY study focuses on the voices of patients who’ve used Incretin-based medicines such as semaglutide and tirzepatide to inform future clinical and public-health practice. The results will be presented at the 2027 Cambridge Festival.
In December, Dr Yajie Zhao, a postdoctoral fellow with the Unit, and colleagues. They reported on the use of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to identify new rare, protein-coding gene varients and gain insight into biological mechanisms associated with adult BMI and type 2 diabetes risk, using data from the UK Biobank & All of Us studies.
Read the Nature Genetics paper.
And as we head to the year’s end, recruitment and data collection for the Fenland phase 3 study has also finished. We are grateful to the more than 5,000 Fenland Study individuals who participated in this phase.
The Fenland study continues: we have recently started inviting randomly selected Fenland Study participants to take part in the Fenland Remote Assessment Study (FRAS), the next step towards digitising the Study. We aim to evaluate how technology can enable research participants to complete specific measurements in the comfort of their home.
Bradford Hill Seminars
The Bradford Hill seminar series is the principal series of The Cambridge Population Health Sciences Partnership, in collaboration with the PHG Foundation. This comprises of the MRC Epidemiology Unit, the Department of Public Health & Primary Care, and the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge, bringing together a multi-disciplinary partnership of academics and public health professionals.
The Bradford Hill seminar programme of internationally recognised speakers covers topics of broad interest to our public health research community. In 2025 we held five seminars:
From Genes to Public Health: The Journey Continues!
Dr Muin J. Khoury,Emory University School of Public Health and University of Washington School of Public Health
10 December 2025. Watch recording
Diagnostic and predictive journeys: Finding the right balance in genomic medicine
Professor Anneke Lucassen, University of Oxford
26 November 2025. Watch recording
The politics of epidemiology and public health in the UK
Professor Danny Dorling, 1971 Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford
15 October 2025. Watch recording.
The SIREN study at five years: Tracking SARS-CoV-2 and respiratory infections in UK healthcare workers since 2020
Victoria Hall, Consultant Epidemiologist, Antimicrobial Resistance & Healthcare Associated Infections Division of the UK Health Security Agency (UK HSA)
07 May 2025. Watch recording.
The Cancer Loyalty Card Study (CLOCS), aiming to help reduce the delays in cancer diagnosis using transaction data
Professor James Flanagan, Imperial College London
02 July 2025. Watch recording.
Watch out for upcoming Bradford Hill Seminars on the Cambridge Population Health Sciences website.
Blogging, vlogging and podding
Through a series of blogs, videos, and The Confidence Interval Podcast, we explore the research happening at the Unit. Hearing from our researchers as they talk science, people, and population health. We have a plethora of podcasts for you in this edition of epigram!
The Brief Interval
For World Diabetes Day in November we celebrated the research into the condition with a series of shorter ‘Brief Interval’ podcasts from researchers at both the MRC Epidemiology Unit and the Institute of Metabolic Science-Metabolic Research Laboratories.
In this podcast, Dr Ana Luiza Arruda talks about the multiple morbidities of diabetes.
Dr Denise Fernandez-Twinn, Dr Adriana Paz Córdova Casanova, and Dr Laís Vales Mennitti share their research into the interventions a pregnant woman can use to mitigate the onset of the condition.
Dr Chunxiao Li shares the association of meat consumption on type 2 diabetes
Dr Charlotte Boughton discusses the use of automated insulin delivery systems with the aim of improving outcomes for people with type 2 diabetes:
A Question of Science
“Can we trust the science of nutrition?” was the question asked of the Unit’s Professor Nita Forouhi and others on an expert panel for the BBC’s A Question of Science. Professor Brian Cox and guests dive into the complex world of diet, nutrition & food choices. Listen
The Confidence Interval
Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout,Spotify, and YouTube.
Our publications
The MRC Epidemiology Unit is committed to Open Access and to making our research more accessible, equitable, transparent and reproducible. We aim for all MRC Epidemiology Unit-led papers to be fully available through Open Access as we continue to break down any barriers to knowledge.
You can find all publications from the MRC Epidemiology Unit on our Publications Database: https://publications.mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk/
You can search by journal, year, study, programme, Unit author, and keywords in the title and abstract.
After a bit of a break, we’re also pleased to be able to provide a round-up of recent publications. Below you can find all papers that have been published so far in 2025.
About epigram
epigram is the newsletter for everyone interested in work happening at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge.
We welcome your views on it. Email us at comms@mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk
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