Diet, biomarkers and non-communicable diseases in rural and urban China: federated analysis of population-based studies

饮食(即特定食物、营养素的摄入量和总体饮食模式)在非传染性疾病的发展和进展中发挥着重要作用，非传染性疾病是导致早期死亡和残疾的主要原因。然而，之前的大多数研究都是在高收入的西方国家进行的，从低收入和中等收入国家(如中国)获得的信息有限，近四分之三的非传染性疾病发生在那里。由于缺乏可靠的信息，很难为这些国家的非传染性疾病预防制定基于证据的饮食指南。更重要的是，仅在特定人群(或少数类似人群)中观察到的关联可能不是饮食的真正影响，而是由于与饮食习惯密切相关的其他因素的影响，例如社会人口因素或其他生活方式因素(例如体力活动)。因此，研究LMICs中饮食与非传染性疾病之间的联系变得非常重要，因为与西方国家相比，这些国家的人口具有非常不同的饮食和疾病模式，饮食因素和社会人口因素之间的相关性也非常不同。此外，饮食对NCD的发生和发展产生影响的确切生物学机制在很大程度上尚不清楚。更好地了解这些机制将大大提高我们有效预防和治疗这些疾病的能力。在这项提案中，我们计划将几项基于大规模人群的研究结合在一起，这些研究总共涉及100万名中国成年人，他们可以获得有关饮食习惯、与身体新陈代谢状态密切相关的生物标志物和非传染性疾病发病率的信息，以及长期储存的生物样本。将对现有和新产生的组学(即MS代谢组学和代谢组学)数据进行联合分析，以便对饮食和非传染性疾病的相关性以及潜在的潜在机制进行全面而有力的评估。

Diet (i.e. intake of specific foods, nutrients, and overall dietary patterns) plays an important role in the development and progression of NCDs, which is the leading cause of early death and disability. However, the majority of the previous studies were conducted in high-income Western countries, with limited information available from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as China, where nearly three-quarters of NCDs occur. This lack of robust information makes it difficult to formulate evidence-based dietary guidelines for NCD prevention in these countries. More importantly, associations observed only in a specific population (or few similar populations) may not be the true effect of diet, but due to the impact of other factors which are closely related to dietary habits, e.g. socio-demographic factors or other lifestyle factors (e.g. physical activity). Therefore, studying the association between diet and NCDs in LMICs has become very important because populations in these countries, compared to those living in Western countries, have very distinct dietary and disease patterns and the correlations between dietary factors and socio-demographic factors are also very different. Moreover, the exact biological mechanisms through which diet exert its effect on NCD incidence and progression is largely unknown. A better understanding of such mechanisms will greatly enhance our capacity to effectively prevent and treat these diseases. In this proposal, we plan to bring together several large population based studies which in total involves > 1 million Chinese adults for whom information on dietary habits, biomarkers which are closely related to metabolism status of the body, and incidence of NCDs is available, together with long-term stored bio-samples. Joint analyses of existing as well as newly generated omics (i.e. MS-Metabolomics and Metagenomics) data will be performed in order to have a comprehensive robust assessment of diet and NCD association as well as potential underlying mechanisms.