Chronic diseases are highly prevalent in all populations, including the neuropsychiatric disorders, cardiometabolic multimorbidity and chronic pain. This study aims to investigate the associations between chronic diseases and behaviour-related phenotypes, and its physiological and genetic mechanisms. The behaviour-related phenotypes in this research primarily include the following aspects: lifestyle factors, sociodemographic indicators and physical measures. The physiological mechanism in this research primarily includes brain structure, blood cells and blood biochemistry, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) metabolomics, and proteomic phenotypes. Key research questions include: (1) How do behaviour-related phenotypes independently and interactively influence chronic disease risk? (2) What roles do brain structure, systemic inflammation, and metabolic dysregulation play in mediating these associations? (3) How do genetic predispositions and proteomics modulate these relationships across molecular and phenotypic levels?
The research will integrate multimodal data to address these questions. First, association between behaviour-related phenotypes and risk of chronic diseases were explored. Second, brain structure (regional grey matter volumes, white matter microstructure via MRI) will be analyzed to explore the links to chronic diseases and behaviour-related phenotypes. Inflammatory profiles (blood cell and biochemistry) and NMR metabolomics will assess systemic immunometabolic dysregulation. Genetic contributions will be evaluated through polygenic risk scores (PRS) for chronic diseases and traits, complemented by genome-wide association study (GWAS) to identify novel loci associated with disease and behaviour-related phenotypes interactions.
