Approved research

Interaction between metabolic syndrome and other environmental, genetic and clinical factors impacting liver disease and other health outcomes

Lay summary

Preliminary Application: Metabolic Syndrome and Liver Disease Previous research has shown that metabolic syndrome and associated metabolic risk factors are important risk factors for liver disease such as end-stage liver disease (ESLD) and liver cancer (HCC). We propose an analysis to describe the risk factors, genetic determinants, natural history and outcomes of metabolic syndrome and liver disease in comparison to non-metabolic syndrome and non-liver disease patients. This project will leverage the comprehensive phenotypic information, and prospective nature of UK Biobank to determine the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the etiology of liver diseases including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). It will expand the knowledge about the prevention and treatment of liver diseases. We propose to correlate phenotypic, biomarkers, environmental and genetic data with liver diseases. In addition, we plan to perform meta-analysis of GWAS and Mendelian Randomization to identify important genetic factors in liver diseases. As we are trying to describe the prevalence, natural history, genetic determinants, outcomes, and potential risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome and liver disease as compared to healthy patients, we are requesting the full cohort.