Approved Research
Study on the mechanism of the impact of the interaction between genes with the environment and lifestyle habits on the onset of chronic diseases
Lay summary
With the aging of the global population, chronic non-communicable diseases have become one of the main causes of human death. In recent years, the morbidity and mortality of chronic diseases have shown a continuous upward trend, which has brought a huge burden of disease. The prevention and early intervention of chronic diseases are problems that need to be solved urgently. Genes, environment and lifestyle habits play important roles in the occurrence and development of chronic diseases. This study proposes to establish a prospective cohort of natural populations by requesting the general information, clinical data, survival environmental factors, lifestyle and behavioural habits, health and disease status, and gene pool from the UK Biobank. In this study, genome wide association study will be used to investigate the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with major chronic diseases, namely cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases (hypertension, coronary heart disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, etc.), tumors (lung cancer, colorectal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer, etc.), lung diseases (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, etc.), metabolic syndrome (diabetes, hyperlipidemia, osteoporosis, hyperuricemia, etc.) and chronic kidney disease, as well as SNPs associated with common environmental/lifestyle habit factors, and to screen for SNPs that act on both. Besides, based on generalized multifactor dimensionality reduction method, we study the interaction between the environment/lifestyle habits and genes, explore the relationship between the environment/lifestyle habits-gene and chronic diseases, and reveal the specific mechanisms of the effects on the development of chronic diseases.
From our results, we expected to guide the precise prevention and management of chronic diseases and explore new therapeutic targets, for the purpose of reducing the incidence of chronic diseases, delaying the disease progression, improving the prognosis of patients, reducing the burden of chronic diseases, and finally contributing to human health. This study is planned to last for three years