This project investigates ocular and systemic determinants of retinal health and disease risk.
Loss of retinal neurons is a hallmark of ocular ageing and a key contributor to vision loss from diseases such as glaucoma. It may also mirror brain health, offering a non-invasive window into neurodegeneration. However, there is limited large-scale evidence quantifying how retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) metrics change across adulthood, and which lifestyle, systemic, and genetic factors accelerate or protect against thinning.
Our goals are to: (1) quantify age-related trajectories of RNFL measures across adulthood, assessing possible non-linearities; (2) identify ocular and systemic risk factors (e.g., blood pressure, metabolic markers, sleep, activity, air pollution exposure, epigenetic clocks) associated with faster RNFL thinning; (3) evaluate genetic contributions using polygenic risk scores and exome/WGS summary metrics; and (4) relate RNFL measures to diagnosed eye and systemic diseases using linked records.
