Interaction of Diet Quality Scores and Genetic Variants in Relation to Cardiometabolic Traits

Tufts University

Lay summary

Many evidences indicate that unhealthy diet can increase the risk of developing cardiometabolic diseases including cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. However, it seems that the effect of unhealthy diet is not equal among different individuals. This phenomenon may be due to different genetic background in different individuals.

The UK Biobank has large study samples, which will allow us to investigate if individual's diet quality can modify his or her predisposed genetic risk on cardiometabolic diseases. We therefore aim to jointly analyze the effect of individuals' diet quality and genetic risk for cardiometabolic risk factors such fasting levels of glucose, lipids, blood pressure, and overall and specific adiposity (e.g., obesity level and fatty liver status). We will use commonly used approach to build multiple diet scores to capture habitual diet quality. These diet scores have been examined in many studies in different ethnicity groups in different nations. These studies consistently showed that the proposed diet scores are robustly associated with cardiometabolic risk factors.

The proposed study will last three years. With completion of the proposed project, we will provide novel data with respect to how diet quality can modify individuals' genetic background to affect their cardiometabolic health. As such we may provide new evidence to design a better individualized nutrition strategies to improve cardiometabolic health. In addition, the proposed work may be able to identify novel genetic markers for cardiometabolic diseases, which will be helpful to reveal new pathways and mechanisms for disease treatment.