Currently, conclusions regarding the impacts of genetic and environmental factors, especially their interactions, on reproductive and sexual health are not entirely consistent, with the precise mechanisms of influence remaining unclear. This project proposes to combine multiple scientific methodologies, including epidemiology, genetics, genomics, and statistics, to investigate the impacts of genetic factors (including common variations, rare variations, coding region variations, and non-coding regulatory region variations) and environmental factors such as exposure to air pollutants, climatic conditions, and the built environment on reproductive and sexual health, utilizing large-scale population data from the United Kingdom. The study aims to examine potential genetic and environmental risk factors and their interactions from multiple perspectives and levels, based on stratification of reproductive and sexual health status.
The project is planned to be conducted in three stages over three years: (1) Grouping the population based on reproductive and sexual health information, exploring common and rare variant loci associated with reproductive and sexual health disorders through genome-wide association studies and whole-genome sequencing. Integrating functional genomic data including promoters, enhancers, UTRs, TADs, etc., variants will be categorized to explore their impact on reproductive and sexual health; (2) Acquiring large sample population environmental exposure data from the UK Biobank database to construct correlations with reproductive and sexual health; (3) Using multiple statistical analysis methods, by combining polygenic risk scores with environmental exposure data, we will employ various regression analysis methods to analyze the potential impact of the interactions between genetic factors and environmental exposures on indicators of reproductive and sexual health.
Through the studies described above, we aim to explore the genetic risk factors associated with reproductive and sexual health disorders as well as their correlations with exposure to environmental factors. Furthermore, we intend to elucidate the differential impact of various environmental factors on reproductive and sexual health disorders across different genetic backgrounds. Based on this knowledge, we hope to develop individualized intervention programs and diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to enhance the reproductive and sexual health status of the population.
