Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, with substantial heterogeneity in disease susceptibility, progression, and clinical outcomes. Understanding cardiovascular disease requires an integrative approach that incorporates population-level risk factors, biological markers, structural and functional imaging, and genetic and molecular information.
This project aims to investigate the determinants and predictors of cardiovascular disease using the extensive epidemiological, imaging, genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic resources of the UK Biobank. The primary research questions include: (1) how demographic, lifestyle, and cardiometabolic factors are associated with incident cardiovascular events and mortality; (2) whether circulating biomarkers, proteomic and metabolomic profiles, and imaging-derived phenotypes improve cardiovascular risk stratification beyond established risk factors; and (3) how genetic and molecular variation contributes to cardiovascular disease susceptibility and prognosis.
The objectives of this research are to characterise cardiovascular risk profiles in the general population, to evaluate the predictive performance of clinical, molecular, and imaging markers, and to explore heterogeneity in cardiovascular disease across key population subgroups. By integrating epidemiological analyses with imaging and multi-omics data, this project seeks to improve understanding of cardiovascular disease mechanisms and support the development of more accurate and personalised approaches to cardiovascular risk prediction.
