Obesity strongly increases the risk of cardiometabolic diseases, yet the underlying mediators of this relationship are not fully understood. Given that obesity strongly influences circulating protein levels, we investigated proteins mediating the effects of obesity on coronary artery disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. By integrating two-step proteome-wide Mendelian randomization, colocalization, epigenomics and single-cell RNA sequencing, we identified five mediators and prioritized collagen type VI α3 (COL6A3).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: People with diabetes are at increased risk of hospitalisation, morbidity, and mortality following SARS-CoV-2 infection. Long-term outcomes for people with diabetes previously hospitalised with COVID-19 are, however, unknown. This study aimed to determine the longer-term physical and mental health effects of COVID-19 in people with and without diabetes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic exposed a global deficiency of systematic, data-driven guidance to identify high-risk individuals. Here, we illustrate the utility of routinely recorded medical history to predict the risk for 1741 diseases across clinical specialties and support the rapid response to emerging health threats such as COVID-19. We developed a neural network to learn from health records of 502,489 UK Biobank participants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the genetic basis of routinely-acquired blood tests can provide insights into several aspects of human physiology. We report a genome-wide association study of 42 quantitative blood test traits defined using Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs) of ~50,000 British Bangladeshi and British Pakistani adults. We demonstrate a causal variant within the PIEZO1 locus which was associated with alterations in red cell traits and glycated haemoglobin.
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