Division of Epidemiology

Persistently unhealthy sleep, either not enough or too much, is associated with a significantly increased risk of Type 2 diabetes in a racially and economically varied adult population, an international team of researchers has reported.

The study was the largest ancestry-stratified, genetic estimation of the heritability of diabetic retinopathy conducted to date and included an unprecedented number of individuals of non-Hispanic African ancestry — more than 46,000.

The Vanderbilt study used RNA-sequencing data generated in multiple normal tissues, along with matched genotype data from the Genotype-Tissue Expression Project as well as large-scale genomic data for cancers of the breast, ovary, prostate, colorectum, lung and pancreas.

V2-GENE, the Vanderbilt-Vietnam Genetic Epidemiology Training Program, will develop a team of researchers and educators to lead genetic epidemiology research of noncommunicable diseases across the lifespan in Vietnam.

A study led by researchers from Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center sheds light on some of the genetic variants that make breast cancer more deadly for women of African ancestry and significantly reduces the disparity in knowledge for assessing their genomic risk factors.

A Vanderbilt study found that Black and white people who earned less than $15,000 a year died, on average, more than 10 years earlier than those whose annual income exceeded $50,000.

Excessive consumption of dietary sodium likely was responsible for up to 30% of cardiovascular disease-related deaths among mostly low-income participants in a large cohort study conducted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center.