(11 March 2021) Groundbreaking research recently published by Liang Group scientists in eLife indicated a better cholesterol profile for those who maintain healthy lifestyle habits in concert with cholesterol-lowering medications. This study, led by postdoctoral research fellow Jiahui Si, found that while both methods to lowering LDL cholesterol are effective, cholesterol-lowering medications are less so than healthy habits for Very-Low-Density Lipoprotein cholesterol (VLDL), which also increases the risk of heart disease. The study suggests both methods together provide for maximal heart-protecting effects (Si et al 2021 eLife).

Read more about the paper in the recent HSPH press release.

(16 June 2020, updated 2 April 2021) Research recently published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology identified an increased risk of developing severe COVID-19 among those in a UK Biobank cohort with non-allergic asthma. While the study also found increased risk of developing severe COVID-19 among those with asthma and COPD, risk was not found to increase among those with allergic asthma (Zhu et al 2020 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology). Also see (Zhu et al 2020 Metabolism).

Read more about the paper in the recent HSPH press release.

(14 May 2020) Research recently published in the European Heart Journal identified a ‘metabolic signature’ consisted of 67 metabolites that can measure adherence and metabolic response to the Mediterranean Diet and may help predict future risk of cardiovascular disease.

Read more about the paper in the recent HSPH press release.

It is hypothesized that obesity causally increases the risk of asthma. Our recent study explored the genetics underlying the association between obesity and asthma (and its subtypes) and found significant genetic correlation between them (Zhu et al 2019 Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology).

Breaking ground on new understandings of mechanisms contributing to previously known associations between asthma and mental health disorders, our recent study found significant correlation between these conditions on a genomic level. The study identified several loci jointly associated with asthma and multiple mental health disorders, highlighting the correlation and potentially forging new directions in terms of care (Zhu et al 2019 European Respiratory Journal).

Our recent study indicated significant genetic correlations between high resting heart rate (RHR), type 2 diabetes, and 6 other cardiometabolic traits, indicating potential shared cause on genetic level (Guo et al 2019 Journal of the American College of Cardiology).

(2019) Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical chemistry technique that can detect thousands of metabolite features, it is important to separate potential measurement artifacts before downstream analyses (Chaffin and Cao et al 2019 Journal of Proteome Research)

Comorbidity of diseases and traits might be due to shared genetic effect, we investigated shared genetic effects at both whole-genome and variant level between metabolic traits and Alzheimer’s disease (Zhu et al 2019 Human Genetics), asthma and allergy (Zhu et al 2018 Nature Genetics), Alzheimer’s disease and cancer (Feng et al 2016 Human Genetics).

Using whole-genome genetic variants to characterize individual’s disease risk and trait values is challenging and has great potential in public health, such as disease prevention and personalized intervention (Chung et al 2019 Nature Communications).

(3 July 2018) Smoking and PAH (polycyclic acromatic hydrocarbons) might affect DNA methylation at many loci. Zhu et al 2016 Environmental Health Perspectives. PAH might also affect DNA methylation clock. Li et al 2017 Environmental Health Perspectives

(2017) Epigenome-wide association studies can help us better understand the etiology for diseases and traits, including Acute Coronary Syndrome (Li et al 2017 Circulation Research), BMI (Mendelson et al 2016 PLoS Medicine).

(September 2016) Combining metabolites with traditional risk factors can greatly improve risk assessment for type-2 diabetes in Chinese samples (Sun, Liang et al 2016 Diabetes Care).

(18 February 2015) DNA methylation with asthma and allergy Liang et al 2015 Nature