Approved Research

Emerging risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases

Lay summary

Cardiometabolic diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide in both women and men. While important advances have been made in controlling modifiable conventional risk factors and improving treatment of cardiometabolic diseases, there is a growing need to evaluate the continuously evolving panel of emerging risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases. This is driven by the recognition that established risk factors cannot entirely explain cardiometabolic disease incidence and the desire to identify novel therapeutic targets. Therefore, the aims of this project are: 1) to characterise and directly compare correlates of emerging risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases; 2) to quantify observational and causal relationships between emerging risk factors and a broad range of cardiometabolic diseases; and 3) to determine the incremental predictive value of emerging risk factors on top of conventional risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases. We will study genetic and phenotypic traits of emerging risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases including lifestyle factors, sex-specific factors, physical measures, and blood-based markers. Furthermore, we will analyse a range of cardiometabolic diseases such as myocardial infarction, stroke, heart failure, peripheral arterial disease, diabetes, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. A cornerstone of our project will be the investigation of sex differences in all analyses. For specific emerging risk factors, we will combine UK Biobank data with data from other epidemiological studies to enhance statistical power and generalisability.  We will perform analyses in the full UK Biobank cohort. The broad phenotypic information and statistical power of the UK Biobank will allow us to provide novels insights into the relevance of various emerging risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases. Since this class of diseases poses an overwhelming burden on health care systems, findings of this project are of major public interest.