Full Name
Prof Koh Woon Puay
Designation
Professor, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine
Bio
Dr Koh is Professor in Healthy Longevity Translational Research Programme at Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. Being a population health scientist, Prof Koh’s research interest and expertise is in unravelling the epidemiology of chronic diseases of importance to Singapore, such as cancer, cardio-metabolic, musculoskeletal and neurodegenerative diseases. Beyond establishing associations between exposures and risk of disease, her research uses molecular and genetic tools to identify modifiable factors that could be applicable to disease prevention, or biomarkers that could be developed for early detection or screening of disease. Prof Koh is the Principal Investigator of the Singapore Chinese Health Study, a 63,257-strong cohort of middle-aged and elderly Chinese Singaporeans established for the long-term study of dietary and environmental determinants of chronic diseases common among Singaporeans. She has co-authored over 380 scientific papers on diet, lifestyle and genes in relation to risk of diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, gout, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis and tuberculosis disease. She has received over $24 million dollars in research funding from NIH (USA) and NMRC (Singapore), and is a recipient of the Ministry of Health NMRC Clinician Scientist Award (Senior Investigator).
Topic
How much does lifestyle at midlife affect health at late life?
Abstract
The accelerated process of ageing is accompanied by increases in age-related diseases and functional disabilities, causing tremendous individual and societal burdens. Hence, it is critical to identify modifiable factors affecting healthy ageing. Several studies have examined the relations of individual lifestyle factors, including diet, body weight, physical activity, smoking and alcohol consumption, with the likelihood of healthy ageing in various populations. However, lifestyle factors are not isolated. We hypothesized that people with multiple healthy lifestyle factors would have higher likelihood of healthy ageing than those with no or fewer healthy lifestyle factors, and the beneficial effect could be incremental. In this talk, I will examine the associations of individual and combined lifestyle factors (BMI, diet, physical activity, smoking, and alcohol drinking) at baseline and follow-up visits, which were conducted over a period of about 20 years, among middle-aged and older participants of the Singapore Chinese Health Study. I will also examine if positive improvement in adopting healthy lifestyle factors, even after midlife, could improve the likelihood of healthy ageing. Finally, I will use the findings from this Singapore Chinese cohort to estimate the proportion of healthy ageing at late life that can be attributed to compliance with protective lifestyle factors at midlife among older adults in Singapore.
