Chinese Doctors Directory Chinese Medical School Graduates Gathering in North America

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Certifications: Board Certified in Geriatric Medicine, Rheumatology, Hospice & Palliative
Medicine

Research Interests:understanding both the origins and the effects of low level chronic inflammation in the onset and progression of age-related diseases and conditions. Aging represents a state of chronic low grade inflammation. Throughout his career, Dr.Yung has been interested in the relationship between ¡°epigenetic drift¡±, autoimmunity and age-related inflammation (¡°inflamm-aging¡±). The chemokine system is critical to initiating and sustaining inflammation. Dr. Yung was the first to report that T cell DNA hypomethylation in aging is associated with increased T cell pro-inflammatory chemokine and simultaneously impaired T cell homeostatic chemokine responses. These observations help explained the observed low level chronic inflammation in aging. Epigenetics is the key that links genes and environment. He believes the origin of late-life inflammation diseases is in part determined by early-life environmental factors that act on the immune system through epigenetic mechanisms, consistent with the ¡°Developmental Origins of Adult Disease (Barker) Hypothesis. His research group recently reported that pre-natal supplementation with key ¡°methyl-donors¡± can ameliorate the pro-inflammatory T cell chemokine response in aging, which in turn reduces the burden of late-life cardiovascular disease.