A program of research in respiratory and cardiovascular genetic epidemiology

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and high blood pressure affect a high proportion of adults in the UK. This program, involving collaborators from several UK and international centres, aims to identify the genetic causes of these disorders. By comparing measures of lung function in tens of thousands of individual study participants for variants at each of millions of different sites across the human genome, we can identify variants associated with lung disease. We will study the impact of these variants in more detail, examining their effect on lung growth, on decline in lung function with age or with disease, on effects of smoking and on response to treatment. Similar discovery and follow-up studies will be undertaken for blood pressure. We can also use the identified genetic variants to tell us more about modifiable non-genetic influences on disease, such as whether dietary deficiency in folate causes high blood pressure. In most cases, we do not expect these variants to accurately predict an individual‘s risk of developing disease, but we do expect the genes identified to give important clues about how the diseases are caused and advance our understanding of how they might be more effectively prevented and treated.