CARE - Weight loss before bowel cancer surgery

ENDO-CARE - Weight loss before endometrial cancer surgery

Rapid weight loss may improve advanced fatty liver disease - The Conversation

Liver disease related to obesity and diabetes rising in the US - Reuters

Weight loss support helps people with fatty liver disease - Reuters

Association of weight loss interventions with changes in NAFLD biomarkers - JAMA Internal Medicine

Supermarkets should help shoppers improve their heart health by listing low fat items higher on their websites - Daily Mail

I am a dietitian and my research focuses on testing how behavioural science can change dietary intake and improve outcomes for patients with obesity-related diseases, as well as exploring the mechanisms through which weight loss could exerts its effects.

I am currently funded by an NIHR Advanced Fellowship leading a programme of work that examines the role of intentional weight loss before cancer surgery. This work  focuses on assessing the feasibility of pre-operative diet-induced weight loss on post-operative complications in patients diagnosed with colorectal or endometrial cancer. This is complemented with  qualitative interviews, health economic modelling, and mechanistic studies. 

Prior to this, I built a programme of work on weight loss for the treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This works used a variety of methodologies, including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, observational analyses, and clinical trials of low-energy diets. It showed that weight loss interventions meet the regulatory criteria for licencing pharmacotherapy for NAFLD and that low-energy diets are safe in an advanced form of NAFLD. It currently explores how the gut microbiome and the immune system might be implicated in these improvements and whether weight loss might be helpful in the treatment of liver cirrhosis. 

I am a member of the NIHR HS&DR funding committee and Chair of the Greek Dietetic Association Weight Management Task Group. 

In 2017, I completed my PhD in Nutrition, Dietetics, and Behavioural Sciences at University College London funded by the UCL Grand Challenges. For my PhD, I adapted a theory-based behaviour change intervention for endometrial cancer survivors and piloted it in a randomised controlled trial. As a post-doc at UCL, I worked in two clinical trials of dietary and physical activity interventions in cancer survivors.