Wenyuan Li

EDUCATION/TRAINING

A. Personal Statement

I studied preventive medicine in China and received bachelor of medicine degree. I took courses in both clinical medicine (e.g. biology, physiology, biochemistry, pathology, internal medicine, surgery) and preventive medicine (e.g. epidemiology, biostatistics, nutrition, toxicology). I then came to Harvard School of Public Health for graduate studies in Epidemiology, received master’s and doctoral degrees in 2013 and 2016.

For my Master thesis, I examined the association between sleep and kidney function using NHANES data, and presented the findings at Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER) meeting in Boston, 2013.

Since I became a doctoral student, I have been working on Framingham Heart Study cohort. My first project focused on air pollution with biomarkers of vascular functions, including oxidative stress, inflammation, and carbohydrate metabolism. I also worked on air pollution with CT measures of abdominal subcutaneous and visceral adiposity, liver adiposity, and BMI. Besides, I have been working on linking air pollution model predictions to FHS data. Additionally, I was the lead author on examining effetcs of ambient particle radioactivity with biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflammation. I have also worked on air pollution with other outcomes including cognitive function, vascular calcification, arterial stiffness, and lung function. Since I became a postdoc, I have also been working on a Sleep and Migraine study (PI: Suzanne Bertisch), and we examined the associations of sleep, alcohol and coffee, and air pollution and weather with migraine incidence. Since 2014, I participated in 19 publications and I am the lead author on seven of them.

My research interests are to promote comprehensive understandings of the adverse effects of ambient air pollution on human health and to explore potential individual-level interventions that may mitigate the impact of air pollution. 

B. Positions and Honors

Positions and Employment

Other Experience and Professional Memberships

Honors

C. Contribution to Science

1. Associations of short-term air pollution exposure with oxidative stress and inflammation: Increasing evidence shows that short-term exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with acute cardiovascular disease, with local and systemic oxidative stress and inflammation hypothesized as underlying biological mechanism. While many controlled animal studies have found increased levels of oxidative stress and inflammatory response after exposure to air pollutants, only a few large-scale human studies have examined these associations, and have had mixed findings. Among participants from the Framingham Heart Study, I found that exposure to higher levels of ambient air pollution measured at a central air pollution monitoring site was associated with higher levels of oxidative stress biomarkers and some inflammatory biomarkers. Our findings indicated that even in a region with air pollution levels within the current air quality standards, the associations of air pollution with oxidative stress and inflammation were still detectable. 
   1. Li W, Dorans KS, Wilker EH, Rice MB, Ljungman PL, Schwartz JD, Coull BA, Koutrakis P, Gold DR, Keaney JF Jr, Vasan RS, Benjamin EJ, Mittleman MA. Short-Term Exposure to Ambient Air Pollution And Circulating Biomarkers of Endothelial Cell Activation: The Framingham Heart Study. Environ Res. 2018 Oct 28;171:36-43. 
   2. Li W, Dorans KS, Wilker EH, Rice MB, Ljungman PL, Schwartz JD, Coull BA, Koutrakis P, Gold DR, Keaney JF Jr, Vasan RS, Benjamin EJ, Mittleman MA. Short-Term Exposure to Ambient Air Pollution and Biomarkers of Systemic Inflammation: The Framingham Heart Study. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2017 Sep;37(9):1793-1800. 
   3. Li W, Wilker EH, Dorans KS, Rice MB, Schwartz J, Coull BA, Koutrakis P, Gold DR, Keaney JF Jr, Lin H, Vasan RS, Benjamin EJ, Mittleman MA. Short-Term Exposure to Air Pollution and Biomarkers of Oxidative Stress: The Framingham Heart Study. J Am Heart Asso 2016 Apr 28;5(5)
2. Associations of air pollution with carbohydrate metabolism: Several large-scale epidemiological studies have found positive associations between air pollution and type 2 diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance, with air pollution-induced oxidative stress and inflammation hypothesized as an underlying biological mechanism. However, only a few studies examined the associations of air pollution with biomarkers such as fasting glucose, insulin, or adipokines. I therefore led the project to examine whether living closer to a major roadway and both short- and long-term exposure to air pollution were associated with the biomarkers. To conduct the analyses, I linked satellite-based predictions of fine particulate matter to participants of the Framingham Heart Study. I found that living closer to a major roadway and higher short-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution were associated with higher levels of fasting glucose. Our results indicated that traffic-related exposures may be the major contributor to the associations between air pollution and carbohydrate metabolism dysfunction.
   1. Li W, Dorans KS, Wilker EH, Rice MB, Kloog I, Schwartz JD, Koutrakis P, Coull BA, Gold DR, Meigs JB, Fox CS, Mittleman MA. Ambient Air Pollution, Adipokines, and Glucose Homeostasis: The Framingham Heart Study. Environ Int. 2018 Feb;111:14-22.
3. Associations of air pollution with obesity: Air pollution-induced carbohydrate metabolism dysfunction may have adverse health effects on obesity. In controlled animal studies, exposure to air pollution has been associated with hepatic lipid accumulation, however, there was a lack of data in humans. The majority of previous studies about traffic-related air pollution and obesity were among children, and little was known about abdominal adiposity. In this project, I examined the associations of distance to a major roadway and long-term exposure to air pollution with adiposity by including participants from the multidetector-computed tomography study, a substudy of the Framingham Heart Study. I found that living within 50 meters from a major roadway was associated with higher bodymass index, higher abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue volume, and more liver fat.
   1. Li W, Dorans KS, Wilker EH, Rice MB, Schwartz J, Coull BA, Koutrakis P, Gold DR, Fox CS, Mittleman MA. Residential Proximity to Major Roadways, Fine Particulate Matter, and Adiposity: The Framingham Heart Study. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2016 Dec;24(12):2593-2599. 
   2. Li W, Dorans KS, Wilker EH, Rice MB, Long MT, Schwartz J, Coull BA, Koutrakis P, Gold DR, Fox CS, Mittleman MA. Residential Proximity to Major Roadways, Fine Particulate Matter, and Hepatic Steatosis: The Framingham Heart Study. Am J Epidemiol. 2017 Oct 1;186(7):857-865. 

Complete List of Published Work in My Bibliography:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/wenyuan.li.1/bibliography/53148873/public/

D. Graduate courses