Feb. 16 – Kannapolis scientist Dr. Steven H. Zeisel has been awarded a $2.6 million, four-year grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases to develop a panel of laboratory tests that assess a person’s choline status.

Dr. Zeisel is director of the UNC Nutrition Research Institute at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis.

Choline is an important and essential nutrient for human health and plays a key role in brain development and liver and muscle function. There are no good validated biomarkers for assessing choline nutritional status that can be practically applied in clinical or public health practice.

“We need a better lab test that health professionals can use to assess a person’s choline status given the narrow range for healthy intake of choline, the three-fold variation in dietary intake in the U.S., and the effects of common genetic variants on requirements for choline,” said Dr. Zeisel.