Approved Research

Identifying associations between physical activity phenotypes, health-related outcome parameters, metabolomics and environmental data (PA4HEALTH)

Lay summary

The value of physical activity to improve health has been stated frequently. We know that physical activity does not only help to prevent diseases, but also supports treatment and rehabilitation. This is known for diseases such as diabetes, heart failure, depression and certain types of cancer.

Based on this knowledge, a certain amount and frequency of physical activity is recommended by the World Health Organization or medical societies such as the British Heart Foundation. Most persons do, however, fail to meet these recommendations.

What we do not know yet is, what are the mechanisms by which the beneficial effects on health work, how exactly our environment plays a role, e.g., the weather, and what are good activity recommendations based on scientific investigations. Our project aims to answer some of these questions by means of access to and analysis of the large data sets of UK Biobank that let us learn about actual activity behaviour in our population and our health, in particular for heart, metabolic and mental diseases.