Research Project Summary

Year Funded: 2011 Budget: $30,000 Funding Agency: Workers’ Compensation Board of Alberta (WCB)
Title: Non-Invasive Diagnostic for the Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Disease and Injury: Prevention/recovery via Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Metabolomics
Category: Occupational Disease, Injury and Health Services
Subcategory: Occupational Health Services
Keywords: Metabolomics, Incidence of injury, Recovery, Treatment, Return to work
Link to research website:

Issue:

Metabolomics involves the identification and quantitative measurement of small physiological compounds in human bio-fluids (e.g., urine, blood, cerebrospinal fluid), and determines how the presence and/or concentrations of compounds change in healthy and disease states. Team members have previously used these changes in the type and concentrations of compounds to diagnose diseases of the lung and brain through a relatively inexpensive and efficient analysis of patient urine samples. We have preliminary data clearly establishing the ability to detect injury due to surgery and inflammation from human and animal urine samples. Along this same avenue, we now propose to follow and subsequently predict an individual’s likelihood of developing and recovering from chronic or incidental injury by applying our metabolomics analysis to an individual’s urine.

Objectives:

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Anticipated Results:

-Obtaining improved clinical outcomes by quantifying recovery and treatment performance
-Ensuring optimal return to work outcomes for claimants thereby reducing recovery time, avoiding re-injury and loss of work-related skills
-Improving the eff

Investigators:

Dr David Broadhurst, Ryan T McKay (University of Alberta)