Risk factors articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors perform an association study on 72,469 exomes to identify significant associations between male-pattern hair loss and rare genetic variants in EDA2R, WNT10A, HEPH, CEPT1, and EIF3F, finding an enrichment of implicated genes in monogenic trichosis genes.

    • Sabrina Katrin Henne
    • , Rana Aldisi
    •  & Stefanie Heilmann-Heimbach

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the authors investigate the incidence and risk factors for post-COVID condition among people who had a mild initial SARS-CoV-2 infection in Norway. They use national linked registry data including ~215,000 individuals with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test who were not hospitalised and followed them up for 180 days after infection.

    • B-A. Reme
    • , J. Gjesvik
    •  & K. Magnusson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    TMAO is known to be atherothrombotic. Here the authors show that i) kidney function is the main determinant of serum TMAO, ii) TMAO increases kidney scarring with TGF-β1 signalling and iii) anti-diabetic drugs with reno-protective properties such as GLP1R agonists reduce plasma TMAO.

    • Petros Andrikopoulos
    • , Judith Aron-Wisnewsky
    •  & Marc-Emmanuel Dumas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the causal impact that risk factors have on healthcare cost is critical to evaluate healthcare interventions. Here, authors show that waist circumference, body mass index, and blood pressure have robust causal impact on healthcare cost.

    • Jiwoo Lee
    • , Sakari Jukarainen
    •  & Andrea Ganna

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gut dysbiosis contributes to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathogenesis, and Bacteroides strains are commonly enriched in AD gut microbiota. Here, the authors show that Bacteroides fragilis and its metabolites 12-hydroxy-heptadecatrienoic acid (12-HHTrE) and Prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) can mediate activation of microglia and induce AD pathogenesis in neuronal C/EBPβ transgenic mice.

    • Yiyuan Xia
    • , Yifan Xiao
    •  & Keqiang Ye

  • Article
    | Open Access

    First-line integrase strand transfer inhibitors are commonly used for people with HIV. Here, Wu et al. report results from a multicenter cohort study in China observing significant differences in all-cause mortality among patients between various treatment groups.

    • Xinsheng Wu
    • , Guohui Wu
    •  & Huachun Zou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Estimating health burden of air pollution against the background of population aging is of significance for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3.9. Here, the authors show that population aging is expected to be the leading contributor to increased deaths attributable to PM2.5 in China by 2035, which will counter the positive gains achieved by improvements in air pollution and healthcare.

    • Fangjin Xu
    • , Qingxu Huang
    •  & Brett A. Bryan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The value of SARS-CoV-2 lateral flow immunoassay tests for estimating individual disease risk is unclear. Here, the authors link testing data from the REACT-2 study in England to hospital and death records and show that vaccinated individuals with a negative LFIA test were at a higher risk of hospitalisation and death.

    • Matthew Whitaker
    • , Bethan Davies
    •  & Helen Ward

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relative protection against Omicron SARS-CoV-2 infection conferred by vaccination and previous infection are not fully understood. Here, the authors use data from a prospective cohort study in the Netherlands and show that hybrid immunity (vaccination plus previous infection) conferred strongest protection.

    • Brechje de Gier
    • , Anne J. Huiberts
    •  & Mirjam J. Knol

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The genetics and clinical consequences of resting heart rate (RHR) remain incompletely understood. Here, the authors discover new genetic variants associated with RHR and find that higher genetically predicted RHR decreases risk of atrial fibrillation and ischemic stroke.

    • Yordi J. van de Vegte
    • , Ruben N. Eppinga
    •  & Pim van der Harst

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although human life expectancy has been increasing, time spent in good physical and cognitive health has not been rising at similar rate. Here, the authors show that both lifespan and healthspan are quantitatively linked to ancestral longevity, and that those from the longest-lived families have a healthier metabolomics profile before the onset of disease, highlighting the important role of the family in healthy survival.

    • Niels van den Berg
    • , Mar Rodríguez-Girondo
    •  & Marian Beekman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Analyses of the association between fatty acids and prostate cancer have often neglected African patients. Here, the authors analyse 24 circulating fatty acids in Ghanaian, African American, and European American men, and explore the associations with socio-demographic factors, diet, FADS1/2 locus, and prostate cancer.

    • Tsion Zewdu Minas
    • , Brittany D. Lord
    •  & Stefan Ambs

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Being fit has been linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, but it is unclear whether this relationship is causal. Using large scale studies with genetic data and measurements of cardiorespiratory fitness, the authors show evidence that higher genetically predicted fitness is causally associated with lower risk of type 2 diabetes independent of adiposity.

    • Lina Cai
    • , Tomas Gonzales
    •  & Nicholas J. Wareham

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relationship between the components of repetitive head impacts and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) remains unclear. Here, the authors use American football helmet sensor data to show that duration of play, cumulative head impacts and linear and rotational accelerations are significantly associated with CTE pathology.

    • Daniel H. Daneshvar
    • , Evan S. Nair
    •  & Jesse Mez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The long-term natural history of long-COVID is not well understood. In this population-based cohort study from Scotland, the authors describe symptom prevalence and health-related quality of life up to 18 months after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test and compare with matched test-negative controls.

    • Claire E. Hastie
    • , David J. Lowe
    •  & Jill P. Pell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The response to infectious and inflammatory challenges differs among people but the reasons for this are poorly understood. Here the authors explore the impact of variables such as age, sex, and the capacity for controlling inflammation and maintaining immunocompetence, linking this capacity to favourable health outcomes and lifespan.

    • Sunil K. Ahuja
    • , Muthu Saravanan Manoharan
    •  & Weijing He

  • Article
    | Open Access

    BRCA1/2 mutations are known to increase risk of breast and ovarian cancer but carrier status in healthy individuals is unknown without genetic testing. Here, the authors created a circulating miRNA signature to predict BRCA1/2 carrier status in healthy individuals to aid the decision process on genetic testing.

    • Kevin Elias
    • , Urszula Smyczynska
    •  & Dipanjan Chowdhury

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Improved biomarker-based tools for diagnosis and risk prediction of venous thromboembolism (VTE) are needed. Here, the authors show that Complement Factor H Related 5 protein, a regulator of the alternative pathway of complement activation, is a VTE-associated plasma biomarker in 5 independent cohorts.

    • Maria Jesus Iglesias
    • , Laura Sanchez-Rivera
    •  & Jacob Odeberg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors assess performance and limitations to polygenic risk scores in different race/ethnic groups. They find that polygenic risk score performance improves with diverse training data, and a better understanding of varying genetic backgrounds, social and environmental factors, and gene-environment interactions, is needed to enhance PRS performance for all groups.

    • Nuzulul Kurniansyah
    • , Matthew O. Goodman
    •  & Tamar Sofer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    mRNA boosters have been shown to be effective against severe COVID-19 illness. In this work, the authors show that in high-risk populations, three doses of mRNA-1273 vaccine instead of BNT162b2 vaccine conferred a small benefit against death or hospitalization with COVID-19 pneumonia.

    • J. Daniel Kelly
    • , Samuel Leonard
    •  & Salomeh Keyhani

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Progress to reduce plastic pollution has been painfully slow and the consequent damage to the natural environment and to human health is likely to increase further. This has been because the views and ways of working of four distinct stakeholder communities are not sufficiently well integrated. (1) Scientists, (2) industry, (3) society at large and (4) those making policy and legislation must in future find ways to work together.

    • Richard S. Lampitt
    • , Stephen Fletcher
    •  & Adrian Whyle

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Risk assessment of lung disease mortality is currently limited. Here, authors show that deep learning can estimate lung disease mortality from a chest x-ray beyond risk factors, which may help to identify individuals at risk in screening and cancer populations.

    • Jakob Weiss
    • , Vineet K. Raghu
    •  & Hugo J.W.L. Aerts

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The placenta has been proposed to be potentially relevant to schizophrenia risk. Here, the authors use the genetically predicted transcriptome to identify genes expressed in the placenta that could be involved in schizophrenia.

    • Gianluca Ursini
    • , Pasquale Di Carlo
    •  & Daniel R. Weinberger

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    Precision environmental health leverages environmental and system-level data to understand underlying environmental causes of disease, identify biomarkers of exposure, and develop new prevention and intervention strategies. In this Perspective, the authors provide real-life illustrations of the utility of precision environmental health approaches and identify current challenges in the field.

    • Andrea Baccarelli
    • , Dana C. Dolinoy
    •  & Cheryl Lyn Walker

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, in a cohort of 772 women undergoing triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) therapy, the authors show that antimicrobial prescription during TNBC treatment associates with inferior overall and breast cancer-specific survival, in turn related to peripheral lymphocyte count and gut microbiome dysbiosis.

    • Julia D. Ransohoff
    • , Victor Ritter
    •  & Allison W. Kurian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pathology diagnostics still rely on tissue morphology assessment by trained experts. Here, the authors perform deep-learning-based segmentation followed by large-scale feature extraction of histological images, i.e., next-generation morphometry, to enable outcome-relevant and disease-specific pathomics analysis of non-tumor kidney pathology.

    • David L. Hölscher
    • , Nassim Bouteldja
    •  & Peter Boor

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Injury poses heavy burden on public health, but little evidence on the potential role of climate change on injury exists. Here, the authors collect data during 2013-2019 in six provinces of China to estimate the associations between temperature and injury mortality, and to project future mortality burden attributable to temperature change driven by climate change.

    • Jianxiong Hu
    • , Guanhao He
    •  & Wenjun Ma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While heart disease, dementia and liver disease often co-occur, multi-organ imaging is needed for deeper elucidation of these cross-organ links. Here, the authors use image-derived phenotypes to describe underlying associations between heart, brain and liver health in a large population cohort.

    • Celeste McCracken
    • , Zahra Raisi-Estabragh
    •  & Stefan Neubauer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nutritional conditions experienced early in life may influence the disease risk of future children and grandchildren. Here the authors report that food abundance among boys before puberty associates with the relative risk of a range of cancers in grandsons, but not in granddaughters.

    • Denny Vågerö
    • , Agneta Cederström
    •  & Gerard J. van den Berg

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Acute graft versus host disease is a rare but deadly complication following liver transplantation. Author show here, upon screening a large cohort of liver transplanted patients and detailed immune phenotyping of samples from the 7 affected individuals and appropriate controls, that human T cell lymphotropic virus type I infection of donor immune cells appear to correlate with the occurrence of acute graft versus host disease.

    • Chuan Shen
    • , Yiyang Li
    •  & Qiang Xia

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The post-acute impacts of COVID-19 in children and adolescents are not well understood. In this population-based study in Geneva, the authors find evidence of COVID-19-related symptom persistence beyond 12 weeks in adolescents, and identify chronic conditions and lower socioeconomic status as risk factors.

    • Roxane Dumont
    • , Viviane Richard
    •  & Idris Guessous

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Environmental exposures in early life can have lasting health effects, but the molecular mechanisms are not well understood. Here, the authors discover >1000 associations between exposure factors and child multi-omics profiles, revealing signatures for diet, toxic chemical compounds, essential trace elements, and weather conditions.

    • Léa Maitre
    • , Mariona Bustamante
    •  & Martine Vrijheid

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated an important changes in online information access. Here, the authors analyse everyday web search interactions across 25,150 US ZIP codes revealing significant differences in how digital informational resources are mobilized by different communities.

    • Jina Suh
    • , Eric Horvitz
    •  & Tim Althoff

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the authors assess changing symptom profiles associated with different SARS-CoV-2 variants from May 2020 to March 2022 in England. Using data from the REACT-1 study, they find that Omicron infection is more often associated with cold and influenza-like symptoms, and less with loss of taste and smell.

    • Matthew Whitaker
    • , Joshua Elliott
    •  & Paul Elliott

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Early forecasts give people in a storm’s path time to prepare, but less is known about the cost to society when forecasts are incorrect. In this observational study, the authors examine over 700,000 births in the path of Hurricane Irene and find exposure was associated with impaired birth outcomes.

    • Jacob Hochard
    • , Yuanhao Li
    •  & Nino Abashidze

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Amino acids are important components in a variety of human foods and diets. Here, the authors show trade-offs linking dietary intake of amino acids to human health and develop amino acid intake guidelines based on them.

    • Ziwei Dai
    • , Weiyan Zheng
    •  & Jason W. Locasale

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Coronary artery disease (CAD) and psoriasis are established comorbidities, however their molecular relationship remains unclear. Here, the authors performed trans-disease meta-analysis, highlighting four genetic loci with evidence of colocalization, and prioritized genes based on multiomic data integration.

    • Matthew T. Patrick
    • , Qinmengge Li
    •  & Lam C. Tsoi

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