Impact of genetic and environmental factors on the health-related outcomes in chronic kidney disease patients

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a prevalent chronic disease which possesses considerable medical burden as significant portion of CKD patients progress to end-stage renal disease (ESRD) or complicated with various adverse health-related complications. It is pivotal for clinicians to focus on reducing such complications, as cardiovascular disease is the major cause of death among them. Both environmental and genetic factors may contribute to the progression to ESRD or development of adverse complications. Nevertheless, thorough investigations regarding which patients possess the elevated risks had not been evaluated yet. We plan to perform the present study to stratify CKD patients according to the risk of progression to ESRD and the risk of developing adverse outcomes, including cardiovascular events and cancer.
We have undergone several studies using the nationwide data of Korean National Health Insurance System andgovernment-funded prospective cohort dataset called Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study to examine the role of genetic and environmental factors in various chronic diseases.. During the next 36 months with the project using the Biobank data, we aim to demonstrate the potential risk factors which contribute most to the development of health-related complications in CKD patients. Mendelian randomization will be applied to test the causality. Moreover, comparative analysis with Korean cohorts will be performed to evaluate the impact of different environmental and genetic factors on the development of adverse outcomes in CKD patients with different ethnicity and also to determine whether the study results could be adapted worldwide. Consequently, the study results may contribute to the preventive health care to reduce the burden of the chronic disease, through informing clinicians how to distinguish the high-risk patients and to minimize health-related adverse outcomes among the applicable patients.