Approved research

Impact of red and processed meat and fibre intake on risk of chronic inflammatory diseases: a prospective UK Biobank cohort study on prognostic factors and personalised medicine in the UK Biobank

Lay summary

The lifetime risk of getting a chronic inflammatory disease (CID) such as gout, psoriasis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis or inflammatory bowel disease is more than 20% in the Western world. The disease burden is highly increasing. There is, therefore, a high demand for effective prevention, diagnostic and treatment strategies. Knowledge of the biological mechanisms may help the development of such strategies. The aim of this project is to produce new knowledge on CID biology for preventive, diagnostic and treatment purposes for the benefit of the individual patients and economy of the health care system. In order to identify genes and lifestyle involved in the development of CID, we will use the large UK Biobank. UK Biobank is a cohort study of 500.000 men and women with prospectively collected lifestyle information. Participants were recruited between 2006-2010 and were aged 40-69 years of age at the time of recruitment, First (Part 1), we will describe the pre-disease lifestyle among participants that developed CID during the follow-up compared to non-CID cases. In particular, we will analyse the hypothesis that a high intake of fibre/red and processed meat protect against developing CID. Next (Part 2), we will perform gene-environment (GxE) interaction analyses combining lifestyle data with hypothesis and data-driven genome-wide analyses to identify gene-lifestyle interactions. Significant results will be sought replicated in other cohorts such as the European Prospective cohort study 'EPIC-IBD'.