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Approved research

Risk prediction and prognosis models based on genetic, environmental and clinical determinants for noncommunicable diseases

Principal Investigator: Professor Wei-Hua Jia
Approved Research ID: 58450
Approval date: June 24th 2020

Lay summary

Summary Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) cause a considerable burden worldwide, and the main chronic NCDs types are cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes. These chronic diseases require lengthy and expensive treatment which forces the families with those patients into poverty. Therefore, it is urgently important to develop the early prevention and control of NCDs. Complex mechanisms driven by a combination of genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors contribute to the etiology of diverse NCDs. We think UK biobank cohort has an incomparable advantage to systematically identify the risk factors and the potential interaction effects for NCDs risk. The extensive information from the large dataset on both environmental exposures and genomics data could be very helpful for individual risk prediction and early intervention for NCDs prevention. Additionally, the baseline clinical characteristics, treatment choice, environmental factors, and individual genetic variations may result in the different prognosis of NCDs. It is beneficial for personalized treatment to comprehensively investigate the risk factors associated with the outcomes of NCDs and to clarify the subjects into different subgroups of prognosis outcomes. We estimate that we will complete the majority of data analysis and finish the relevant results publication in three years. For these aims, we propose to: 1. identify the modifiable environmental factors which impact the disease risk and use novel method to find the causal factors; 2. clarify the genetic contribution to individuals' predisposition of the diseases and identify the novel susceptibility variation; 3. examine whether the genetic factors and the environmental factors could interplay and further elevate the disease risk for individuals; 4. use the above results to build novel strategies for the disease prevention and treatment. Our study will help to promote the understanding of etiology for NCDs and provide theoretical bases to generate early intervention strategies on modifiable exposure for NCDs prevention. Furthermore, it can promote the development of clinical tools to identify individuals at high risk of developing NCDs, manage established risk factors, facilitate the early detection of diseases and guide certain treatment decisions or interventions in clinical practice.