The present study was carried out at the Institute of Biomedicine, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Helsinki, during the years 1996-2000. I owe my deepest gratitude to Docent Riitta Korpela, who suggested the present study to me, and from whom I have received expert guidance at all stages of my work. She has been a wonderful supervisor. I also wish to express my gratitude to my second supervisor, Professor Heikki Vapaatalo, MD, Head of the Department, for his interest in my work and for placing the working facilities of the Department at my disposal.
I owe a warm dept of gratitude to all the members, both past and present, of the research group for gastrointestinal pharmacology, the 'gut group'. In particular I wish to thank Esko Kankuri MD for his invaluable help during Study V. I am extremely grateful to Ms Pirkko Möller for providing her excellent technical assistance during these years, and for innumerable discussions of life and the behaviour of husbands and mothers-in-law! I also want to thank all the other members of staff at the Department for their encouraging attitude towards my studies.
I should also like to thank Tuija Poussa MSc for helping me with the statistics, and Mimi Ponsonby MA, who revised my thesis and a number of the original articles. From both of them I learned many valuable tools for my future as a researcher. I also thank my co-authors, Professor Eeva Moilanen MD, Riikka Nevala MD and Docent Mika Hukkanen. Professor Hannu Mykkänen and Docent Pekka Pikkarainen reviewed the manuscript and made constructive suggestions for improving the work further.
Special thanks go to the volunteers who participated in the studies - it is a demanding task and not, it must be admitted, always an enjoyable one.
I am deeply grateful to my parents, Maija-Liisa and Heikki Kaijala, for their support and encouragement. Most of all, my dearest thanks are due to my two gorgeous children, Saara and Iiro, and to my sweet husband Markus, for their love and loyalty. They are and always will be uppermost in my mind, even if this has not been evident lately!
This study has been supported by the Foundation for Nutrition Research, Helsinki, Finland, to whom I am most grateful for their trust in me, right from the beginning of the thesis. I am also beholden to the Finnish Association of Agronomists and the Association of Clinical and Public Health Nutritionists in Finland for their encouragement towards the end of this project.
Espoo, April 2000
Katri Peuhkuri