About
With population aging and environmental changes, the number of people living with age-related diseases continues to grow. Precision prevention and management of age-related diseases remain public health priorities. Development of age-related diseases (e.g., diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and dementia) is determined by a constellation of factors including, but not limited to, lifestyle factors, biological factors, and genetic factors. However, the independent and joint associations of the aforementioned factors with the development and progression of many age-related diseases are unclear. The interactions between non-genetic factors themselves as well as between genetic and environmental factors in relation to the development and progression of age-related diseases remain to be thoroughly evaluated. The biological mechanisms underlying the development and progression of age-related diseases remain to be elucidated.
Using the data already collected in UK Biobank, we aim to 1) determine individual and joint associations of lifestyle and/or biological factors with age-related diseases or their subclinical markers, 2) determine how lifestyle and biological factors interact with each other or with genetic predisposition and consequently affect development and progression of age-related diseases, and (3) understand the mechanisms underlying the associations of lifestyle and/or biological factors with age-related diseases.
We expect the project to take 3 years. Completion of this project will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the etiology, progression and management of age-related diseases and provide actionable public health and clinical solutions.
15 Publications
| Pub ID | Title | Author(s) | Year | Journal |
|---|
| 21342 | A Metabolomics-Based EAT-Lancet Diet Score and Type 2 Diabetes: Interaction with Genetic, Lifestyle, and Environmental Factors | Zixuan Zhang (+6) | 2026 | Nutrition Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases |
| 16641 | Adverse childhood experiences, genetic predisposition, and lifestyle factors: Roles in cardiometabolic-depressive disorder multimorbidity trajectories | Hao Huang (+6) | 2025 | Journal of Affective Disorders |
| 17097 | Association of blood pressure levels in the nonhypertensive range with mortality among people without traditional risk factors | Sujing Wang (+5) | 2025 | Journal of Hypertension |
| 9937 | Associations of Dietary Cholesterol Consumption With Incident Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease: The Role of Genetic Variability in Cholesterol Absorption and Disease Predisposition. | Shuxiao Shi (+6) | 2024 | Diabetes Care |
| 14583 | Baseline and Dynamic MAF-5 Score to Predict Liver Fibrosis and Liver-Related Events in General Population With MASLD | Shanghao Liu (+5) | 2024 | Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology |
| 15727 | Biological age acceleration and interaction with genetic predisposition in the risk of type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease | Guangrui Yang (+5) | 2025 | GeroScience |
| 13030 | Comparison of race- and ethnicity-specific BMI cutoffs for categorizing obesity severity: a multicountry prospective cohort study | Sujing Wang (+10) | 2024 | Obesity |
| 19451 | Integrated Early-Life Factors and Depression: A Multilevel Investigation of Brain Structural, Immunometabolic, and Genetic Mechanisms | Guangrui Yang (+10) | 2025 | Biological Psychiatry Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging |
| 12774 | Lifestyle modifies the associations of early-life smoking behaviors and genetic susceptibility with type 2 diabetes: A prospective cohort study involving 433,872 individuals from UK Biobank | Xuanwei Jiang (+5) | 2024 | Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome Clinical Research & Reviews |
| 10050 | LiverRisk score: An accurate, cost-effective tool to predict fibrosis, liver-related, and diabetes-related mortality in the general population | Shanghao Liu (+21) | 2024 | Med |
| 20549 | Multi-omic signatures and trajectories of cardiometabolic diseases and depression | Guangrui Yang (+11) | 2026 | Nature Mental Health |
| 16862 | Multi-organ network of cardiometabolic disease-depression multimorbidity revealed by phenotypic and genetic analyses of MR images | Jingxuan Wang (+18) | 2026 | Nature Communications |
| 17115 | Multiomics insight into disease trajectories of cardiometabolic diseases and cancer | Xuanwei Jiang (+7) | 2025 | Nature Communications |
| 20062 | Phenome- and Genome-Wide Insights Into Dietary Patterns: Health Consequences and Genetic Basis | Shuxiao Shi (+13) | 2026 | eFood |
| 13547 | Unveiling the Roles of Immune Function and Inflammation in the Associations Between Dietary Patterns and Incident Type 2 Diabetes | Guangrui Yang (+6) | 2024 | Journal of the American Nutrition Association |
