Approved Research

Exploring and predicting the genetic, lifestyle, medical and environmental factors affecting noncommunicable diseases based on the UK Biobank

Lay summary

Lifestyle, such as rest time and eating habits, has become an important factor affecting human health and longevity. It is worth noting that recent studies have shown that genetic factors, social environment, natural environment, and medical conditions have also become key factors affecting human health. Importantly, the occurrence of a variety of noncommunicable diseases (cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, mental disorders, chronic respiratory diseases, etc.) is the result of the interaction of genetics, lifestyle, living environment and other factors. Therefore, understanding and analyzing the relationship between the disease population and the non-disease population in genetic factors (genes and genomes), lifestyle, living environment, and other factors plays an important role in the prevention, treatment, and prognosis of diseases.  In our study, Cox proportional hazards models were used to explore the effects of environmental and lifestyle factors on the risk of cardiovascular disease (coronary heart disease, cardiomyopathy, aortic aneurysm, venous thrombosis, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, rheumatic heart disease), sepsis, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease and the risk of death.     The effects of genetic variants on the above diseases were investigated by Mendelian randomization.     In addition, machine learning algorithms were used to construct risk prediction models.  We expect that the study of genetic signatures that predict the risk of the above diseases by our proposed approach will provide insight into the biological basis of multiple noncommunicable diseases and provide improved methods for risk stratification.   The duration of this project was 36 months, and our results may provide powerful help for the prevention, treatment, and prognosis of noncommunicable diseases through the association of genetic, lifestyle, and living environment risk factors with noncommunicable diseases.