Approved research

Evaluate the causal effects of diet-modifiable biomarkers on clinical outcomes using Mendelian randomization

Lay summary

Taking dietary supplements could be an effective means of managing health and preventing diseases. The specific health benefits of a dietary supplement have to be evaluated by a clinical trial, which is usually resource-intensive and complicated. An innovative statistical method, called Mendelian randomization, provides a cost-effective alternative to evaluate the causal effect of a specific environmental exposure on a clinical outcome. Our research will develop computational tools implementing this kind of methods and apply them to available data in the UK Biobank. We will un-biasedly evaluate the relationship between all diet-modifiable biomarkers and clinical outcomes. We expect the proposed project will take three years in implementation and then another year in the publication of findings and software. Our research will demonstrate the presence or absence of causal benefits of a biomarker on a clinical condition. These discoveries will guide our future practice of dietary recommendation.