Genetics of complex human traits with a main focus on cardiac disease.

Aim: We want to identify genetic causes of complex human traits. Our main focuses are cardiovascular, inflammatory, metabolic and psychiatric diseases. We hope to identify genetic causes of cardiac diseases, and the consequences of concomitant psychiatric, inflammatory and/or metabolic disease.
Scientific rationale: Cardiovascular, metabolic and psychiatric disease constitute major health care burdens and despite of many years of extensive research, we are still far from elucidating the exact disease mechanisms. In order to increase our understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms behind, we will investigate the valuable dataset of UK Biobank and combine the massive data on disease, medication and lifestyle with our prior knowledge of cardiac disease. We hope our research will be beneficial to future research on prevention and treatment.
Project duration: We expect that we will work on the analyses of data for the next ten years. We will begin with a project on cardiac heart rhythm disturbances and continue with the other phenotypes that we have mentioned depending on what other research groups publish the next years.
Public health impact: We expect to be able to provide valuable insight into the understanding of the biology of the dysfunctional heart, and hopefully contribute to new treatment principles, resulting in the development of personalized medicine.