George Davey Smith

Background Tumour-promoting inflammation is a “hallmark” of cancer and conventional epidemiological studies have reported links between various inflammatory markers and cancer risk. The causal nature of these relationships and, thus, the su…

Identifying genetic determinants of reproductive success may highlight mechanisms underlying fertility and identify alleles under present-day selection. Using data in 785,604 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 43 genomic loci a…

ObjectiveIn this study, we aimed to establish the causal effects of lowering sclerostin, target of the antiosteoporosis drug romosozumab, on atherosclerosis and its risk factors.MethodsA genome-wide association study meta-analysis was perfo…

BACKGROUND: Various risk factors have been associated with epithelial ovarian cancer risk in observational epidemiological studies. However, the causal nature of the risk factors reported, and thus their suitability as effective interventio…

ImportanceThe causal direction and magnitude of the association between telomere length and incidence of cancer and non-neoplastic diseases is uncertain owing to the susceptibility of observational studies to confounding and reverse causati…

BackgroundDespite evidence that genetic factors contribute to the duration of gestation and the risk of preterm birth, robust associations with genetic variants have not been identified. We used large data sets that included the gestational…

The genetic architecture of human reproductive behavior-age at first birth (AFB) and number of children ever born (NEB)-has a strong relationship with fitness, human development, infertility and risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, …

Birth weight (BW) has been shown to be influenced by both fetal and maternal factors and in observational studies is reproducibly associated with future risk of adult metabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes (T2D) and cardiovascular dis…