Height May be Risk Factor for Multiple Health Conditions
hubie writes:
A large genetic study by the VA Million Veteran Program (MVP) has found a person's height may affect their risk for several common health conditions in adulthood. Significant findings include a link between height and lower risk of coronary heart disease, and a link between height and higher risk for peripheral neuropathy and circulatory disorders.
Dr. Sridharan Raghavan from the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System, who led the study, described the results as "a significant contribution to understanding how height is related to clinical conditions from an epidemiologic perspective." [...] "The broad scope of our study yielded a catalog of clinical conditions associated with genetically predicted height. In other words, these are conditions for which height might be a risk factor, or protective factor, irrespective of other environmental conditions that also could impact height and health."
[...] Overall, genetically predicted height was linked to both lower and higher disease risk, depending on the condition. Being tall appears to protect people from cardiovascular problems. The study linked being taller to lower risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and coronary heart disease. But risk of atrial fibrillation was higher in taller participants. These connections have been shown before in previous research.
Conversely, being tall may increase the risk of the majority of non-cardiovascular conditions considered in the study. This was especially true of peripheral neuropathy and circulatory disorders involving the veins.
[...] Taken together, the results suggest that height may be an unrecognized but biologically important and unchangeable risk factor for several common conditions, particularly those that affect the extremities, according to the researchers. It may be useful to consider a person's height when assessing risk and disease surveillance, they say.
Click through to the fine article to see a few other things associated with height.
Journal Reference:
Sridharan Raghavan et al., A multi-population phenome-wide association study of genetically-predicted height in the Million Veteran Program [open], PLOS Genetics, 2022. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1010193
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