Tao Huang

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Peking University

Objectives: Observational studies have indicated that life course adiposity is associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, whether such an association reflects causality remains unclear. We aimed to determine whether life course adiposity, such as birth weight (BW), childhood body mass index (BMI), adult BMI, body fat percentage...

Importance Despite substantial progress in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C)–lowering strategies, residual cardiovascular risk remains. Apolipoprotein C3 (APOC3) has emerged as a novel target for lowering triglycerides. Multiple clinical trials of small-interfering RNA therapeutics targeting APOC3 are currently underway. Objective To inv...

Chinese women have benefited more than men from improvements in social determinants of health in decreasing the burden of cardiovascular diseases in recent decades; however, Chinese women, especially those in the younger generation, are facing new challenges, argue Siyan Zhan and colleagues

Objective This study aimed to identify gestational weight change trajectories and examine their association with perinatal outcomes. Methods Prenatal and delivery records of 3393 twin pregnancies were obtained from the China–US Collaborative Project for Neural Tube Defects Prevention, a large population-based cohort study. Generalized gestational...

Objectives: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive and fatal disease characterized by the degeneration of spinal cord and brain neurons. Proteomics combined with Mendelian randomization (MR) is an effective method for finding disease treatment targets. Methods: We aimed to seek new therapeutic targets for ALS. A large-scale GWAS on pr...

Objective Hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTRv) is an autosomal dominant genetic disease characterized by the misfolding and deposition of the transthyretin (TTR) protein. This study aimed to describe the clinical and genetic characteristics of ATTRv in a large multicenter Chinese cohort. Methods Patients from 14 centers were included in th...

The study aimed to explore the association between different sleep traits and all-cause mortality as well as to validate causality in the association through mendelian randomization (MR). We analyzed 451,420 European ancestry participants from the UK Biobank. Multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards model was conducted to evaluate the associ...

Background Increasing evidences suggests that depression is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome. Cognitive deficits in depression are associated with poor psychosocial functioning and worse response to conventional antidepressants. However, a consistent profile of neurocognitive abnormalities in depression remains unclear. Objective We used data-dri...

Background: The role that sleep patterns play in sepsis risk remains poorly understood. Objectives: The objective was to evaluate the association between various sleep behaviours and the incidence of sepsis. Methods: In this prospective cohort study, we analysed data from the UK Biobank (UKB). A total of 409,570 participants who were free of s...

Objective: To describe the distribution characteristics of alcohol consumption in adult twins in the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR), and further explore the influence of genetic factors on alcohol consumption in adult twins. Methods: The subjects of the study were twins registered by CNTR in 11 project areas across China from 2010 to 2018. A...

Neurotensin (NTS) is a secretory peptide produced by lymphatic endothelial cells. Our previous study revealed that NTS suppressed the activity of brown adipose tissue via interactions with NTSR2. In the current study, we found that the depletion of Ntsr2 in white adipocytes upregulated food intake, while the local treatment of NTS suppressed food i...

Background Adverse early-life events influence the health with ageing throughout the life course. However, the effects of combined early-life risks on ageing acceleration in adults and the roles of social environment risks remain unknown. Objective To investigate associations of maternal smoking, breastfeeding and birth weight with accelerated bio...

Background: Previous studies have suggested that antidiabetic drug use may be associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. However, these studies are limited by many confounding and reverse causality biases. We aimed to determine whether antidiabetic drug use has causal effects on ALS. Methods: Drug-target Mendelian randomization analysis was con...

Several crucial acceleration periods exist during aging process. Epigenetic clocks, serving as indicators of aging, are influenced by genetic factors. Investigating how the genetic contributions on these clocks change with age may provide novel insights into the aging process. In this study, based on 1084 adult twins from the Chinese National Twin...

Background: Emerging evidence suggests a link between sleep patterns, healthy lifestyles, and the risk of cardiometabolic outcomes. However, few studies have explored the association between lifestyles that incorporate healthy sleep patterns and genetic factors with the risk of cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM). Objective/Aim : To prospectively...

Objectives: Our study aimed to assess the associations between meal-replacement (MR) drinking and risks of all-cause, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease (CVD), and cancer mortality. Methods: The study was based on 6770 adults aged 20 years or older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination (NHANES) 2003–2006 with linked mortality d...

Background/Objectives: Menopause and related metabolites are associated with mortality. However, the relationship between earlier menopause, premature mortality, and the role of metabolomic signatures remains underexplored. This study investigated the association between earlier menopause and premature mortality, and the mediating effect of metabol...

Objective This study aimed to find out whether phenotypic age could mediate the protective effects of healthy lifestyles on mortality. Methods We included adult participants with available data for individual PhenoAge and LE8 scores from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005–2010 (3 cycles) and linked mortality records utill De...

There is a growing interest in the linkage of cardiovascular health (CVH) with depression/anxiety but the evidence of “Life’s Essential 8” CVH score is scarce. We evaluated the associations of CVH score with risk of incident depression/anxiety among ~0.4 million participants. During follow-up, 17,554 incident events with symptoms of either disorder...

Dyslipidemia is one of the cardiometabolic risk factors that influences mortality globally. Unraveling the causality between blood lipids and metabolites and the complex networks connecting lipids, metabolites, and other cardiometabolic traits can help to more accurately reflect the body’s metabolic disorders and even cardiometabolic diseases. We c...

Purpose Two-sample Mendelian randomization methods were used to explore the causal effects of cognitive reserve proxies, such as educational attainment, occupational attainment, and physical activity (PA), on biological (leukocyte telomere length), phenotypic (sarcopenia-related features), and functional (frailty index and cognitive performance) ag...

Background & Aims The EAT-Lancet Commission devised a globally sustainable dietary pattern to jointly promote human health and sustainability. However, the extent to which this diet supports metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) has not yet been assessed. This study aimed to investigate the association between the EAT-Lan...

Aims To determine whether inflammatory biomarkers are causal risk factors for more myopic refractive errors. Methods Northern Sweden Population Health Study (NSPHS), providing inflammatory biomarkers data; UK Biobank, providing refractive errors data. 95,619 European men and women aged 40 to 69 years with available information of refractive errors...

Studies suggest that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) compromises the integrity of white matter fiber tracts, primarily affecting motor fibers. However, it remains uncertain whether the integrity of these fibers influences the risk of ALS. We performed bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) and multivariable MR analyses to evaluat...

Background Epigenetic clocks were known as promising biomarkers of aging, including original clocks trained by individual CpG sites and principal component (PC) clocks trained by PCs of CpG sites. The effects of genetic and environmental factors on epigenetic clocks are still unclear, especially for PC clocks. Methods We constructed univariate twi...

Background Lower birth weight (BW) might increase the risk of adulthood type 2 diabetes, but its associations with the highly heterogeneous type 2 diabetes subtypes remain to be studied. In addition, whether the associations between lower BW and adulthood type 2 diabetes risks depend on fetal or maternal effect is largely unknown. Methods In this...

Aims The relationship between uric acid (UA) concentrations and the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), especially for subtypes of CVD among individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD) is not well understood. This study aimed to investigate whether uric acid concentration was associated with subtypes of CVD and all-cause mortality among individ...

The cognitive problems are prominent in the context of global aging, and the traditional Mendelian randomization method is not applicable to ordered multi-categorical exposures. Therefore, we aimed to address this issue through the development of a method and to investigate the causal inference of cognitive-related lifestyle factors. The study samp...

Objective High low-density-lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol has been associated with an increased risk of coronary artery diseases (CAD) including acute myocardial infarction (AMI). However, whether lipids lowering drug treatment is causally associated with decreased risk of AMI remains largely unknown. We used Mendelian randomization (MR) to evaluate...

Observational studies have suggested that the use of antihypertensive drugs was associated with the risk of frailty; however, these findings may be biased by confounding and reverse causality. This study aimed to explore the effect of genetically predicted lifelong lowering blood pressure (BP) through different antihypertensive medications on frail...

Epigenetic clocks based on DNA methylation have been known as biomarkers of aging, including principal component (PC) clocks representing the degree of aging and DunedinPACE representing the pace of aging. Prior studies have shown the associations between epigenetic aging and T2DM, but the results vary by epigenetic age metrics and people. This stu...

Aims We aimed to examine the longitudinal associations of birth weight with plasma metabolites in adulthood, and further quantify the proportions of the links between birth weight and incident adult type 2 diabetes (T2D) that were mediated by plasma metabolites. Materials and Methods A total of 62,033 participants with complete nuclear magnetic re...

The connection between triglyceride-rich lipoproteins and cardiometabolic multimorbidity, characterized by the concurrence of at least two of type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease, and stroke, has not been definitively established. We aim to examine the prospective associations between serum remnant cholesterol, triglycerides, and the risks of pr...

Aim Myocarditis is a recognized safety concern following COVID‐19 mRNA vaccination. However, there is limited research quantifying the risk associated with the third dose or comparing the risk between the three doses. The US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a passive surveillance system that monitors rare adverse events after US‐li...

Low birth weight and unhealthy lifestyle are both associated with an increased risk of hypertension. The authors aimed to assess the joint association and interaction of birth weight and lifestyle with incident hypertension. The authors included 205 522 participants free of hypertension at baseline from UK Biobank. A healthy lifestyle score was con...

Background and Aims Sex‐specific associations of sex hormone‐binding globulin (SHBG) and bioavailable testosterone (BAT) with NAFLD remain indeterminate. We aimed to explore observational and genetically determined relationships between each hormone and NAFLD. Methods We included 187 395 men and 170 193 women from the UK Biobank. Linear and nonlin...

Background The cognitive problems are prominent in the context of global aging, and the traditional Mendelian randomization method is not applicable to ordered multi-categorical exposures. Therefore, we aimed to address this issue through the development of a new method and to investigate the causal inference of cognitive-related lifestyle factors....

Currently, only the general control of the risk factors is known to prevent lacunar cerebral infarction, but it is unknown which type of medication for controlling the risk factors has a causal relationship with reducing the risk of lacunar infarction. To unlock this medical mystery, drug-target Mendelian randomization analysis was applied to estim...

Background Both genetic factors and air pollution are risk factors for coronary artery disease (CAD), but their combined effects on CAD are uncertain. The study aimed to comprehensively investigate their separate, combined and interaction effects on the onset of CAD. Methods We utilized data from the UK Biobank with a recruitment of 487,507 partic...

Background: Reproductive risk factors and air pollution for developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have been documented separately. However, the combined effects of overall reproductive risk status on COPD and the extent to which this can be impacted by air pollution are unknown. The aim of this study was to construct a reproductiv...

Background To establish a polysocial risk score (PsRS) incorporating various social factors for capturing the dementia risk and investigate the benefits of favorable social conditions across different genetic backgrounds. Methods This prospective cohort study comprised 345,439 participants initially free of dementia from the UK Biobank. A total of...

Background Early-life exposure increases health risks throughout an individual’s lifetime. Biological aging is influenced by early-life risks as a key process of disease development, but whether early-life risks could accelerate biological aging and elevate late-life mortality and morbidity risks remains unknown. Knowledge is also limited on the po...

Early life events and environmental factors are associated with type 2 diabetes (T2D) development. We assessed the combined effect of birth weight andambient air pollutants, and effect of their interaction on T2D risk. Totally, 6,474 T2D incidents were recorded over an 8.7-year follow-up period. The adjusted hazard ratios (aHRs) with 95% confidence...

Objective Whether adiposity traits are causal risk factors for cardiopulmonary multimorbidity (CP‐MM) remains largely unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the causal role of adiposity traits in the development of CP‐MM. Methods This study involved 408,886 participants from the UK Biobank who had complete phenotypic and genetic data. Cox r...

Background Several previous studies have shown that excessive screen time is associated with an increased prevalence of dementia, Parkinson’s disease (PD), and depression. However, the results have been inconsistent. This study aimed to prospectively investigate the association between different types of screen time and brain structure, as well as...

Background: Early-life exposure increases health risks throughout an individual's lifetime. Biological aging is influenced by early-life risks as a key process of disease development, but whether early-life risks could accelerate biological aging and elevate late-life mortality and morbidity risks remains unknown. Knowledge is also limited on the...

The fat-to-muscle mass ratio (FMR) has been proposed as a meaningful indicator of risk of obesity. This study investigated the associations between total and regional FMR and incident breast/ovarian cancer. A total of 256,390 participants (women, mean age 56.35 ± 7.98 years old) from the UK Biobank were enrolled. The association was estimated by Co...

Aim To identify the psychological distress (PD) associated 5'‐cytosine‐phosphate‐guanine‐3' (CpG) sites (CpGs), and investigate the temporal relationship between dynamic changes in DNA methylation (DNAm) and PD. Methods This study included 1,084 twins from the Chinese National Twin Register (CNTR). The CNTR conducted epidemiological investigations...

Context Excessive salt consumption is known to increase the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease, but the association between salt intake and incident type 2 diabetes has not been extensively researched. Objective In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationships between the frequency of adding salt to foods and incident type 2 d...

Introduction: Time spent on screen-based sedentary activities is significantly associated with dementia risk, however, whether the associations vary by family history (FHx) of dementia is currently unknown. We aimed to examine independent associations of two prevalent types of screen-based sedentary activities (television [TV] viewing and computer...

Objective: Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is caused by both genetic and cardiometabolic risk factors. However, the magnitude of the genetic predisposition of T2D in the Chinese population remains largely unknown. Methods: This study included 93,488 participants from the China Kadoorie Biobank, and multiple polygenic risk scores (PRS) were calculated. A c...

Background and objectives: We aimed to investigate the association of triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index with hypertension and compare the discriminative power of the TyG index, lipid, glycemic parameters for hypertension using the China Health Examination Collaborative study (CHEC Study). Methods and study design: Data were collected at Ningbo Mi...

Aging plays a crucial role in the mechanisms of the impacts of genetic and environmental factors on blood pressure and serum lipids. However, to our knowledge, how the influence of genetic and environmental factors on the correlation between blood pressure and serum lipids changes with age remains to be determined. In this study, data from the Chin...

Background Finding effective and safe therapeutic drugs for atrial fibrillation (AF) is an important concern for clinicians. Proteome‐wide Mendelian randomization analysis provides new ideas for finding potential drug targets. Methods and Results Using a proteome‐wide Mendelian randomization approach, we assessed the genetic predictive causality b...

The healthy aging index (HAI) has been recently developed as a surrogate measure of biological age. However, to what extent the HAI is associated with all-cause and cause-specific mortality and whether this association differs in younger and older adults remains unknown. We aimed to quantify the association between the HAI and mortality in a popula...

PurposeDiabetes and dyslipidemia are among the most common chronic diseases with increasing global disease burdens, and they frequently occur together. The study aimed to investigate differences in the heritability of glycemic traits and serum lipid indicators and differences in overlapping genetic and environmental influences between them across a...

Background: Systematically assessing the causal associations between medications and neurodegenerative diseases is significant in identifying disease etiology and novel therapies. Here, we investigated the putative causal associations between 23 existing medication categories and major neurodegenerative diseases (NDs), including Alzheimer's diseas...

Previous studies have found that migraine patients are associated with white matter lesions (WMLs), but the causal relationship between the two remains unclear. We intend to explore the bidirectional causal relationship between migraine and WMLs using a two-sample mendelian randomization (MR) method. We employed summary-level data from a recent lar...

Background Several previous studies have shown that dietary patterns are associated with the incidence of depressive symptoms. However, the results have been inconsistent. This study aimed to prospectively investigate the association between dietary patterns and the risk of depressive symptoms in two large cohort studies. Methods The Tianjin Chron...

Background: The prevalence of childhood obesity is rapidly increasing worldwide. Exercise has been suggested as the primary approach to manage body weight, but an effective exercise program tailored for school-age children is still lacking. Objective: This trial aims to evaluate the efficacy of a novel multilevel (children, families, and schools)-c...

Mendelian randomization (MR) is a statistical technique that uses genetic variants as instrumental variables to infer causality between traits. In dealing with a binary outcome, there are two challenging barriers on the way toward a valid MR analysis, that is, the inconsistency of the traditional ratio estimator and the existence of horizontal plei...

Background: Short-term clinical trials have shown the cholesterol-lowering potentials of phytosterols, but their impacts on cardiovascular disease (CVD) remain controversial. This study used the Mendelian randomization (MR) to investigate the relationships between genetic predisposition to blood sitosterol concentration and 11 CVD endpoints, along...

Background: Telomere length has been linked to various health outcomes. To comprehensively investigate the causal effects of telomere length throughout the human disease spectrum, we conducted a phenome-wide Mendelian randomization study (MR-PheWAS) and a systematic review for MR studies. Methods: We conducted a PheWAS to screen for associations...

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is clinically documented to co-occur with multiple gastrointestinal disorders (GID), but the potential causal relationship between them remains unclear. We aimed to evaluate the potential causal relationship of MDD with 4 GID [gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), peptic...

Background: Observational studies suggest that statins may affect amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, they are limited by confounding and reverse causality biases. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the potential causal associations between statins and ALS using a mendelian randomization (MR) approach. Methods: Two-sample MR and drug-t...

Background: Short-term clinical trials have shown the effectiveness of low-carbohydrate diets (LCDs) and low-fat diets (LFDs) for weight loss and cardiovascular benefits. We aimed to study the long-term associations among LCDs, LFDs, and mortality among middle-aged and older people. Methods: This study included 371,159 eligible participants aged...

Background: several previous studies have shown the importance of the plant-based diets. However, not all plant-based foods are necessarily beneficial for dementia or depression. This study aimed to prospectively investigate the association between an overall plant-based diet and the incidence of dementia or depression. Methods: we included 180,...

Background: There is a growing interest in the linkage of cardiovascular health (CVH) with depression/anxiety but the evidence of the latest “Life’s Essential 8” is scarce. We aimed to evaluate prospective associations of “Life’s Essential 8” CVH score redefined in 2022 with risk of incident depression and anxiety. Methods: Based on the latest defi...

Background & aims: A healthy sleep pattern has been related to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). We aimed to identify the metabolomic signature for the healthy sleep pattern and assess its potential causality with T2D. Methods: This study included 78,659 participants with complete phenotypic data (sleep information and metabolomic measureme...

Theory predicts that biological processes of aging may contribute to poor mental health in late life. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated prospective associations between biological age and incident depression and anxiety in 424,299 UK Biobank participants. We measured biological age from clinical traits using the KDM-BA and PhenoAge algorithms....

Objective: To describe the distribution characteristics of hyperlipidemia in adult twins in the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR) and explore the effect of genetic and environmental factors on hyperlipidemia. Methods: Twins recruited from the CNTR in 11 project areas across China were included in the study. A total of 69 130 (34 565 pairs) of a...

Objective: To describe the distribution characteristics of hypertension among adult twins in the Chinese National Twin Registry (CNTR) and to provide clues for exploring the role of genetic and environmental factors on hypertension. Methods: A total of 69 220 (34 610 pairs) of twins aged 18 and above with hypertension information were selected from...

Background and aims: Heart failure (HF) is often triggered by hypertension and can benefit from antihypertensive treatment. We aimed to investigate whether pulse pressure (PP) could independently raise the risk of HF beyond systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP), as well as explore the potential mechanisms of antihyperten...

Background: Accumulating evidence showed a bidirectional association between post-traumatic stress disorder and inflammation. However, whether the association is causal remains unclear. We aimed to evaluate the causal relationships between inflammatory cytokines and post-traumatic stress disorder using two-sample bi-directional Mendelian randomiza...

Objective: Previous observational studies revealed a potential but partially controversial relation between lipid metabolism and risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), potentially prone to bias. Therefore, we aimed to study whether lipid metabolism involves genetically determined risk factors for ALS through Mendelian randomization (MR) anal...

Background The evidence is equivocal on the association between meat consumption and ischemic heart disease (IHD) risk. To what extent the variation of individuals' metabolic responses to the same diet may account for this association is not fully understood. We aim to identify metabolomic signatures characterizing consumption of unprocessed red me...

Background Cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CMM) is the coexistence of two or three cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs), including diabetes, ischemic heart disease (IHD), and stroke, which are recognized as cardiometabolic physiology changes with aging. However, whether accelerated biological aging is associated with the trajectories of CMM development...

Background: Reproductive risk factors are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women. However, the combined effects of the composite reproductive risk factors on CVD are unknown. This study was performed to construct a reproductive risk score (RRS) to measure reproductive status, examine the association between RRS and...

Several observational studies have indicated an association between high serum levels of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). To assess whether theses associations reflect causality, we carried out two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR). Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with BCA...

Background The Healthy Aging Index (HAI) has been regarded as useful in capturing the health status of multiple organ systems. However, to what extent the HAI is associated with major cardiovascular events remains largely unknown. The authors constructed a modified HAI (mHAI) to quantify the association of physiological aging with major vascular ev...

Background: Genetic factors and muscle strength both contribute to the risk of major depressive disorder (MDD), but whether high muscle strength can offset the risk of MDD with different genetic risk is unknown. This study aims to examine whether a higher muscle strength is associated with lower risk of MDD regardless of genetic risk among middle-...