This study aims to understand the role of genetics interacting with various environmental risk factors that directly affecting gut health, such as food poisoning, diets, medications.
We are particularly interested in a small subgroup of IBS patients who developed into new cases followed by food poisoning. Observing only a small proportion of food poisoning patients, estimated between 10-20 %, developing into IBS cases, we speculate that genetics must play some role in the development of this IBS subgroup. Focusing on this subgroup, we can identify effective genetic variants that likely share a common pathway.
An access to the country level health outcome data allows us to track a relatively common condition, food poisoning. Digestive Health on-line questionnaire provides extra layer of information about current and potential IBS patients.
Another aim of this study is to propose better schemes to study the role of environmental weak risk factors genetic signals. Despite the importance, the small effect size has limited new discoveries on their role on initiation and progress of IBS factors. We will explore more complex models Instead adjusting as confounders or testing as interactions, we will explore more complex statistical methods to examine the impact of environmental factors on the SNPs and bioinformatics tools to utilize the full potential o health outcomes, online survey and Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) data tracing the role of environmental factors.
