Approved Research

Elucidating risk factors for and health impact of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders

Lay summary

Heart, lung, blood, and sleep (HLBS) disorders are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. This project aims to understand how HLBS disorders are interrelated regarding their underlying causes, risk factors and clinical presentations, as well as their impact on other health outcomes in the aging population. The 'big data' in the UK Biobank provide an ideal platform to examine findings previously reported by other studies in more details and to explore and test novel hypotheses in HLBS research. This multi-year project over 36 months is expected to better characterize the risk factor profiles for HLBS disorders at the population level and have the potential to generate compelling evidence for more personalized recommendations for prevention of HLBS disorders.

Scope extension:

1. Identify sociodemographic, behavioral, environmental, physiological, and genetic risk factors for heart, lung, blood, and sleep (HLBS) disorders.
2. Examine phenotypic and genetic links among HLBS disorders.
3. Evaluate short- and long-term impact of HLBS disorders on other health outcomes, with a focus on cancers and neurodegenerative disorders.
4. Develop and evaluate robust, reproducible, and powerful approaches for analyses of genetic, omics, and longitudinal data to enable aims 1-3.
5. Incorporate metabolic disorders (e.g., obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance) and mortality in the analysis of HLBS disorders.