A new study has revealed that a variety of environmental factors, including lifestyle choices like smoking and physical activity and living conditions, have a more significant impact on health and premature death than our genes.
The study was led by researchers from Oxford Population Health. The study analysed data from nearly half a million UK Biobank participants and examined the influence of 164 environmental factors and genetic risk scores for 22 major diseases on ageing, age-related diseases, and premature death.
The findings were published in Nature Medicine this week.
As per the key findings, the environmental factors explained 17% of the variation in risk of death, compared to less than 2% explained by genetic predisposition (as per the present). Of the 25 independent environmental factors identified,…