Life-course risk and protective factors associated with complex diseases

Complex diseases are quite prevalent in the daily life. Some common diseases such as heart diseases, hypertension, and diabetes, etc., are all typically complex diseases. It has cost huge burden to the socioeconomic and healthcare systems for all countries in the world. Despite great effort has been made to the diagnosis and treatment of complex diseases over the years, the mortality and disability are still high. As a result, more attention should be turned to the investigations of effective preventive strategies. As we know, both environmental and genetic factors are potential risk factors to the complex diseases. However, whether there are causal effects between risk factors and the outcomes is still not explicit. In addition, the underlying mechanism of these complex diseases are also controversial. This project aims to identify the life-course risk and protective factors of complex disease outcomes both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, such as cardiometabolic diseases, neurological diseases, mental disorders, cancer and longevity. We will also study the role of gene-environmental interactions in the onset and progression of the complex diseases. The duration of the current research is expected to be at least three years. The findings are expected to help identify more life-course risk factors or predictors, which would increase our knowledge of developing effective preventive and intervention strategies. The results would also bring benefits for understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms and susceptibility of the life-course risk factors of complex diseases.