Approved Research

Precision cardiometabolic health in asymptomatic UK Biobank participants.

Lay summary

The central aim of this proposal is to the understand the shared and unique determinants of cardiometabolic diseases in healthy participants of the UK Biobank. Cardiometabolic diseases include heart attack, heart failure, stroke, cirrhosis due to fatty liver, kidney disease, and dementia. These diseases are the most common cause of death and disability across the world. These diseases share several risk factors in common with each other such as high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, excess weight; and also have unique risk factors that are specific for each disease. Previous research work has focused on understanding the risk of each cardiometabolic disease in isolation even though these diseases share risk factors and frequently coexist in the same patient. It is important to have a holistic approach to understand cardiometabolic disease risk in apparently healthy individuals. Thus, in this proposal we plan to examine markers that are shared across a cardiometabolic diseases and unique to each disease in order to develop a composite index that can be used to predict disease risk accurately and precisely in healthy individuals. Our team plans to analyze the extensive information regarding body composition, diet, sleep, physical activity, blood and imaging markers of heart, blood vessels, brain, kidney, liver, and metabolic function that have already been collected in the UK Biobank. We anticipate that this project will take 3 years to complete. Our findings will provide important information regarding holistic cardiometabolic health and disease risk to patients and healthcare providers.