Hi everyone!
In my lab we recently welcomed a new trainee, who will be investigating thepolygenic effects of inflammation alongside environmental exposures to better understand their impact on the risk of Parkinson’s Disease.
We’ve been brainstorming some ideas, but I would greatly appreciate your insights and perspectives on this!
Thanks!
Hi @paularp , sounds like an interesting and important project! Environmental exposures may indeed account for a significant percentage of Parkinson’s cases and are still underwhelmingly studied.
I’m wondering if any of our community members with experience / interest in gene-environment interactions or environmental data (@ecebayram, @rochet071369, @jbmchls, @natalia.chunga, @ekaamewu, @waldoe, @Sherpi) would have any input for Paula?
A big reason why it’s understudied is the lack of easily accessible data unfortunately… PDGene & GP2 may be good places with relatively easy access for genetic data but the environmental info, I’m not too sure about. Medicare, UK Biobank and other health registries will have a bit more medical history information and maybe the usual suspects for environmental factors like smoking, alcohol, drug use. I feel like the Fox Insight probably has way more environmental data than those registries, but I’ve never used the genetic data fed into the Fox Insight so I’m not sure if that’s a good option? Andy Singleton, Sara Bandres Ciga, Alastair Noyce will be great contacts to reach out to either way, they’re brilliant scientists and also awesome humans to collaborate with! I’ve also been seeing the increase in Mendelian randomization studies, probably because there’s not a ton of data to directly check the association otherwise. Buuut then again, I may be all wrong and am all ears if someone actually has a good resource they are aware of 