Chronic inflammatory conditions, which include arthritis, heart disease, and asthma, are the most common causes of death and disability in the UK, and often occur together in the same individuals. These conditions have a major impact on the health and wellbeing of patients and their families, account for a large proportion of GP visits and overall public health care costs, and have poorer long-term outcomes in those from deprived backgrounds and ethnic minorities. Patients with these conditions often have very different clinical features of their disease, such as the age at which symptoms start, how quickly the disease progresses, the severity of disease, and how they respond to treatments.
The overall aim of our proposal is to use the extensive data resources available in UK Biobank to better understand the biology that leads to these clinical features of disease, and why they might vary by sex, ethnicity, and social deprivation. With this improved understanding, we anticipate that we will be able to better predict those individuals who are most likely to develop disease, allowing us to monitor them and put in place measures to help prevent the disease occurring, and to provide more personalised treatment to a patient for the specific clinical features of their disease. In the long-term, we anticipate that these advances will help reduce deaths due to these conditions, and improve the health of wellbeing of patients affected by these conditions, irrespective of their social background or ethnicity.