Doctoral student at the Toulouse I2MC laboratory, Emma Dupont is rewarded by the Foundation for Medical Research (FRM). She studies the influence of obesity on heart development in childhood. And warns: a diet rich in fat and sugar exposes you to serious risks. Explanations.
At the Institute of Metabolic and Cardiovascular Diseases (I2MC/Inserm-University of Toulouse), in Céline Galès’ team, Emma Dupont studies cardiac architecture. Since she was little, the heart has fascinated her. “My grandfather had several myocardial infarctions, he wears a pacemaker (cardiac stimulator). It aroused my curiosity and my desire to understand,” underlines the young woman, originally from the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region.
Today, it is the hearts of children and adolescents that occupy her research time. His thesis aims to understand the early effects of obesity on cardiac development and, in particular, on the risks of developing heart failure at a young age. The Foundation for Medical Research (FRM) has just given him its support by awarding him the Jeanne-Philippe Béziat 2025 prize, which will finance three years of salary for his work in the laboratory.
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Obesity is indeed one of the main risk factors for heart failure. But its effects on the heart, in young age and adolescence, are still poorly understood. “In mice, we were able to observe that there is a critical phase after the weaning period, during which the heart muscle continues to mature. If we transpose it to humans, this corresponds to the period between 3 years and 14 years. Until now, we considered that the heart was mature at birth, but this is not the case,” says Emma Dupont.
A major public health issue
“A fatty diet, rich in sugars, offered just after breast milk thwarts this late phase of development of the heart and can promote heart failure in adulthood. This is our hypothesis based on our observations in mice. We will therefore analyze the repercussions on cardiac development and see if there are also metabolic disorders (hepatic steatosis, obesity). At the same time, a clinical program, carried out with the Toulouse University Hospital, is collecting data from around a hundred obese children. morbid to see if there are the same functional disorders”, explains the doctoral student.
“Our project is part of a major public health issue. According to estimates, in 2050, 80% of people suffering from heart failure will have heart failure of the preserved ejection fraction (ICFEP) type. However, 80% of people suffering from ICFEP today are obese. We must be able to raise awareness about the diet of young people and be able to make early diagnoses”, concludes Emma Dupont.
