Approved Research

Lifestyle and environmental factors in relation to risks of major chronic diseases and mortality.

Lay summary

Aims: Our aim is to find out how strongly lifestyle and environmental factors are related to risks of common chronic diseases (including Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, et al) and life expectancy.

Scientific rationale: Evidences from observational studies showed that a number of environmental exposures and lifestyle habits played an important role in modulating the risk for major chronic diseases. However, neither lifestyle nor individual environmental risk factors for major chronic diseases act in isolation and that their combined effects must be considered. And risk factor interactions must be taken into. Therefore, with our project, we aim to study the role of modifiable environmental and lifestyle risk factors for the prevention of common diseases. We will consider important background factors (e.g., dietary, physical activity, education level, obesity, sleeping, smoking, sun exposure, local environment) and apply multiple statistical methods (e.g., mediation analyses, restriction, propensity score matching) to evaluate the impact of diet and environmental factors on risks of chronic diseases.

Project duration: 3 Years.

Public health impact: With our project we aim to deliver important information on role of modifiable environmental, and lifestyle risk factors for the prevention of common diseases will be clarified. And these novel findings are of clinical and public health relevance.