The taller you are, the higher your risk of getting these 3 diseases!

A person's height is determined by a combination of genes and environment, but their genetic makeup may also increase their risk of various diseases.

The largest study to date on the relationship between height and disease, published in the journal Public Library of Science-Genetics on June 2, shows that being tall may increase the risk of neurological, skin and certain heart diseases. The findings suggest that height can be used as a risk factor to prioritize screening for people at high risk of certain diseases.

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A person's adult height is determined by thousands of genetic variants and environmental factors such as socioeconomic status. Previous studies have attempted to assess a person's height based on genes alone, but the link between height and many other diseases has not been identified.

Sridharan Raghavan of the University of Colorado, Colorado, and colleagues analyzed data from 323,793 former members of the armed forces who were participating in a research project aimed at exploring the links between genes, environmental factors and disease.

The team looked at 3,290 gene variants known to influence height, and their associations with more than 1,000 clinical traits. This confirmed that genetically predicted taller height increases the risk of atrial fibrillation (heart palpitations) and circulatory problems. They also found that having genes associated with taller height increases the risk of nerve damage and skin and bone infections. This suggests that measuring someone's height could be a quick and easy way to determine disease risk. In other words, the taller you are, the higher your risk of disease may be.

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"Genetically predicted height correlated well with measured height, so in the clinic, a tape measure would be sufficient," Raghavan said. "Our findings are a first step toward incorporating height into disease risk assessment because we've established that taller height may be a true risk factor."

“One potential implication of this study is that some health-related tests may need to be targeted more toward people who are very tall,” said Tamar Sofer of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. But she said more research is needed before such tests can be used in clinical practice.

Source: China Science Daily

Related paper information:

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1010193

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