Metabolic and exposomic predictors of cardio-metabolic diseases

Cardiometabolic diseases (CMD) is the most common cause of death in the developed countries. The etiology is complex, it includes genetics and environmental factors, and is not completely understood hampering effective prevention strategies. An important research question is identifying new risk factors for CMD and the development of prediction models of CMD, which would allow identification of high-risk groups and personalized prevention. 

CMD are associated with substantial changes in plasma metabolites. However, it is not known if their changes are causal for the disease development or are a result of a disease. To answer this question and to develop a prediction model for CMD, we propose to study the blood metabolomic/exposomic profile of Lifelines participants before diagnosis, and compare it to samples from a sub-cohort that do not have the disease of interest (so called Case-cohort design). We will select two common diseases, type 2 diabetes (T2D) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) (See definitions below). We will select individuals who developed these diseases during their participation in Lifelines, and for whom pre- diagnosis samples are available. We will perform the analysis of blood metabolomics/exposomics (based on LC and GC-MSMS) in relation to the presence of disease in the case-cohort study.