Approved Research

Understanding the Role of Lifestyle Behaviours as Predictors of All-Cause Mortality and Major Morbidity Outcomes in the UK Biobank

Lay summary

Factors such as age, sex, ethnicity, smoking status, deprivation and past medical history have been widely used to create models that work to predict the future risk of death or having a medical event such as a heart attack. This information can be used to identify high risk individuals for preventative intervention (for example by taking a statin). However, such risk prediction tools do not explain all of the population or individual risk of disease and are not modifiable. In addition, such risk scores do not take into account current lifestyle behaviour and practices. For example, there is no consideration of how much physical activity or exercise someone does, despite the fact that such behaviour can have a huge impact on the risk of premature mortality or the risk of developing chronic disease. The aim of this research is to understand how much additional information lifestyle behaviours provide when predicting the risk of premature mortality or developing a chronic disease. It is hoped such information will work to both make risk prediction models more accurate whilst also allowing individuals to better understand how much their lifestyle today can predict their risk tomorrow.