Approved Research

Investigation of Metabolic Diseases and Their Systemic Complications: Including Epidemiology, Risk Factor Identification, Analysis of Causal Associations, and Prognosis Prediction

Lay summary

Health problems like diabetes, obesity, and body shape can affect our bodies in many ways. They can lead to more inflammation and blood clotting, which can cause long-term issues in organs such as the kidney, heart, liver, eyes, and brain. In turn, other diseases can also impact these health problems through things like inflammation, hormones, and nutrition.

It's important to understand how these health issues are connected to different diseases. This will help improve patient care and create better ways to prevent and treat these conditions. In our research project, we'll study how diabetes, obesity, body shape, and aging are related to the development or worsening of heart, brain, kidney, and eye diseases.

To do this, we'll use different methods to study the links between these health problems and diseases. We'll look at things like age, gender, lab tests, and images of the body; analyze genetic data; and use data of brain scans, heart tests, and eye exams from the UK Biobank.

Our study will take 36 months, and we'll focus on heart, brain, kidney, and eye diseases, but we won't limit our research to just these conditions. We hope our findings will help us better understand how these health problems affect our bodies and are connected to different diseases. This could lead to better patient care, new ways to prevent and treat diseases, and improvements in public health.