Systematic classification of shared components of genetic risk for common human diseases

Check out our new paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/07/23/374207

We have used the hospital records of 500,000 UK Biobank donors to map genetic associations across 19,628 diagnostic terms. Our results show strong evidence for 3,510 independent genetic risk variants that affect multiple clinical phenotypes, which can be clustered into 629 distinct disease association profiles. We show how these clusters define the genetic architecture of common medical conditions, including hypertension and immune-mediated diseases such as psoriasis. Finally, we demonstrate how clusters can be utilised to re-define disease relationships and to inform drug discovery strategies.