Genomic and environmental risk factors for cardiometabolic disease in Africans

合作中心的长期愿景是在非洲建立可持续的研究能力，从而了解撒哈拉以南非洲肥胖症和相关心脏代谢疾病（CMD）的遗传、表观遗传和环境风险因素之间的相互作用。协调委员会将在威特沃特斯兰德大学和发展中国家人口及其健康状况人口评价国际网络的主持下得到巩固。它将利用现有纵向队列的独特优势，包括南非的城市索韦托和农村阿金库尔研究（基于Wits），以及肯尼亚，加纳，坦桑尼亚，布基纳法索和南非建立良好的INDEPTH人口健康和监测中心。这些中心提供完善的基础设施、训练有素的现场工作人员、长期的社区参与和详细的纵向表型数据，重点关注肥胖和心脏代谢健康。主要优势是在现有强大的队列基础上，在各研究中心协调表型，并代表非洲人口的地理和社会差异。我们的目标是：1.为非洲大陆的基因组研究建立可持续的基础设施（生物库和实验室）和能力（特征明确的人口队列、基因分型和生物信息学）; 2.了解来自西非、东非和南非的撒哈拉以南人口的基因组结构，以指导基因组研究（使用无关个体和家族三人组进行基因组测序和高通量SNP和CNV阵列，以提高单倍型分析的准确性）; 3.研究这些人群中独立和协同的基因组对体脂分布（BMI，臀部/腰围，皮下和内脏脂肪）的贡献，考虑相关的环境和社会背景（农村/城市社区，快速转变的肥胖患病率，不同的HIV，TB和疟疾感染史）。我们将在纵向队列中研究肥胖和脂肪分布对CMD风险的影响。协调委员会将利用一大批经验丰富的非洲科学家和国际合作者，以确保其愿景取得成功。

The long-term vision of the Collaborative Centre (CC) is to build sustainable capacity in Africa for research that leads to an understanding of the interplay between genetic, epigenetic and environmental risk factors for obesity and related cardiometabolic diseases (CMD) in sub-Saharan Africa. The CC will be consolidated under the auspices of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health in Developing Countries (INDEPTH). It will capitalize on the unique strengths of existing longitudinal cohorts, including the urban Soweto and rural Agincourt studies in South Africa (Wits based), and the well established INDEPTH demographic health and surveillance centers in Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Burkina Faso and South Africa. The centers offer established infrastructure, trained fieldworkers, long-standing community engagement, and detailed longitudinal phenotypic data, focusing on obesity and cardiometabolic health. Key strengths are harmonized phenotyping across sites, building on strong existing cohorts, and representation of the geographic and social variability of African populations. We aim to: 1. Build sustainable infrastructure (biobanks and laboratories) and capabilities (well characterized population cohorts, genotyping and bioinformatics) for genomic research on the African continent; 2. Understand the genomic architecture of sub-Saharan populations from west, east and south Africa to guide genomic studies (genome sequencing and high throughput SNP and CNV arrays using unrelated individuals and family trios to improve the accuracy of haplotype analyses) and; 3. Investigate the independent and synergistic genomic contributions to body fat distribution (BMI, hip/waist circumference, subcutaneous and visceral fat) in these populations considering the relevant environmental and social contexts (rural/urban communities, quickly transitioning obesity prevalence, differential HIV, TB, and malaria infection histories). We will investigate the effect of obesity and fat distribution on the risk for CMD in the longitudinal cohorts. The CC will draw upon a wide group of highly experienced African scientists and international collaborators to ensure the success of its vision.