Candidate Member Longitudinal Population Study

MPITO Cohort

MPITO Cohort is a Longitudinal Population Study based in Kenya.

Population: 10,000

Kenya Kenya

About the cohort

The MPITO cohort builds on the long-standing Turkana Health and Genomics Project (THGP), a community-engaged research project in northwest Kenya designed to understand how ecology, lifestyle, and social change shape human health across the life course. The Turkana provide a rare context: individuals span a dramatic lifestyle gradient, from nomadic pastoralists living in arid desert environments to urban residents experiencing rapid market integration.

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This transition allows MPITO to investigate how shifts in diet, physical activity, infectious exposures, and climate stress interact with human biology and aging. The cohort integrates deep phenotyping (including clinical measures, environmental exposures, and multi-omic data) with longitudinal follow-up to track how lifestyle transitions influence immune function, cardiometabolic health, and biological aging.

By comparing individuals across pastoralist, rural, and urban contexts, MPITO seeks to identify both protective adaptations and emerging disease risks associated with modernization. As part of the African Population Cohorts Consortium (APCC), MPITO will contribute a unique perspective on how rapid lifestyle transitions shape aging trajectories in African populations.

This will provide an opportunity to study how environmental change, cultural transition, and evolutionary history interact to shape healthy aging and disease risk in rapidly changing environments.