NSHG-PM Webinar
Studying Health and Disease Throughout the Lifespan
1 December 2020. The 2020-2021 NSHG-PM webinar series continued on December 17, 2020, with a seminar by Søren Brunak of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen, titled “Longitudinal Phenotypes at Population Scale.”
Brunak was joined for discussion by Lili Milani from the Estonian Genome Center, Pål Njølstad from the University of Bergen, and Kári Stefánsson from deCODE genetics. Attendees were encouraged to pose questions and make comments.
Listen to the webinar
Deciphering the mountain of disease burden
The Global Burden of Disease studies over the past several decades have provided numerous innovative ways to look at the data on disease and suffering across the world and to some extent through the lifespan. But it still remains a dense mountain of data.
Illnesses come and go over our lifetimes, Brunak notes. Some strike early and are intermittent or never return, while others develop into chronic conditions. He studies how these diseases interact with each other, asking whether they share genetic underpinnings or exposures. What can we learn if we subgroup patients according to disease progression patterns rather simply dividing them into single-disease case and control groups?
Answering these questions will require new approaches to health and disease data. This may only be possible in the Nordic country health systems, which are comprehensive and focused on both clinical care and research to prevent and treat future disease.
Global years lived with disease (YLDs), from GBD 2017, The Lancet. 8 Nov 2018: 392.
