Age is the dominant risk factor for most chronic human diseases, but the mechanisms through which ageing confers this risk are largely unknown. The age-related acquisition of somatic mutations that lead to clonal expansion in regenerating hematopoietic stem cell populations has recently been associated with both hematological cancer and coronary heart disease. Analyses of somatic whole-genome sequences provide the opportunity to identify root causes of CH.
To investigate the prevalence and dynamics of genetic alterations among healthy elderly individuals, a cohort of 200 people >60 years was genotyped for commonly mutated CH-associated genes by targeted deep next-generation sequencing. And we preliminarily found that clonal hematopoiesis is common with aging, but the clone size does not correlates with age. To confirm this, we apply to access the UK biobank database with a large size of population-based cohort for this study.
