Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading cause of death in the Western world. To improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of CAD, we need to gain better understanding of the genetic and environmental factors that promote the progression of this disease. Our first aim of this project is analyze the gene-environment interactions (GxEs) underlying CAD to better understand the molecular mechanisms that influence disease risk.
There is increasing evidence that many diseases/traits share common genetic profiles, suggesting that disease etiologies may overlap. To identify overlapping genetic factors involved in CAD development, we will investigate the association of risk variants with other diseases and traits and evaluate causality. Finally, multilocus genetic risk scores are calculated using variant annotation based weights. The proposed research aims to to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of CAD. Access to the full cohort with individual-level genotype data available is applied.