Interaction between Iron Status and Vitamin D Health in Ethnic Groups - Implications for Immune Function

Good nutrition is key to health. Over the last decade, there has been a growing recognition in the field of nutritional
sciences that being low on iron intake and not having enough iron in your blood is not good for health. Indeed iron
deficiency/insufficiency is a major public health issue in ethnic groups - both in women of child-bearing age and older
men and children from Black and South Asian populations. It has also been clearly identified that having a low intake of
vitamin D and not enough vitamin D circulating in your body is also not good for health; and indeed vitamin D deficiency
is becoming increasingly common in the UK, EU and worldwide. There are also data to show that there is a synergistic
effect between vitamin D status and iron status but this has not been studied effectively in Ethnic Groups and there are
few too data to make any firm conclusions.

In this project, we will investigate to see if there is a link between iron deficiency/insufficiency and markers of immune
health in ethnic groups using; 1) population-based/'big data' approaches and 2) data from human nutrition trials and a
specific intervention study using both nutrients. For the 1) population-based/'big data' approach, we will undertake: (i)
systematic review/meta-analysis of globally available data on iron intake and iron status; the interaction between iron
and vitamin D status and upper/lower respiratory tract infections; (ii) analysis of iron intake, iron status and the
interaction with vitamin D status and its concomitant effect on markers of immune health in the UK Biobank and the USA
NHANES datasets, specifically focusing on South Asian, Black African-Caribbean and Black African American men and
women; For the 2) human nutrition trials - (i) we will use stored samples to examine the relationship between iron
intake, iron status and vitamin D status on specific markers of immune function in different Ethnic Groups with existing
samples available; (ii) an iron/vitamin D supplementation randomized controlled trial (RCT) on markers of immune
function in ethnic groups.