Our primary objectives are to:
1. Investigate sociodemographic, lifestyle, biological, and environmental risk factors associated with eye, ear, nose, and throat (EENT) diseases, including retinal degeneration, hearing loss, tinnitus vestibular disorders chronic rhinosinusitis, laryngeal disorders, and related symptoms.
2. Analyze interactions and combined effects of these factors (e.g., socioeconomic status with environmental exposures) on disease risk.
3. Identify causal pathways and modifiable factors to inform early intervention strategies.
4. Develop an interpretable, fairness-constrained predictive risk assessment model integrating (1) deep phenotyping data (genomic data, imaging biomarkers, clinical data) and (2) dynamic environmental exposure metrics (real-time air quality/geolocation tracking/lifestyle) to establish an early warning system for EENT and related diseases.
Objective and scientific rationale for the research:
EENT diseases, including retinal degeneration, hearing loss, tinnitus, vestibular disorders, chronic rhinosinusitis, and laryngeal disorders, are major contributors to global disability. Over 1.5 billion people suffer from hearing loss alone, with substantial socioeconomic and health impacts, including links to dementia and mental illness. While prior studies have explored isolated risk factors (e.g., smoking, age, genetics), the integration of multimodal data to understand complex interactions remains limited. For instance, environmental exposures (e.g., air pollution, occupational hazards) and nasal/allergy-related factors may synergistically increase risks for chronic ENT conditions. Emerging evidence suggests that EENT diseases exhibit shared etiological pathways with neurodegenerative conditions (e.g., cochlear synaptopathy in early Alzheimer’s). Our multimodal approach will pioneer the identification of trans-disease biomarkers, addressing a critical gap in current single-modality EENT studies.