The Health for Life in Singapore (HELIOS) Study: delivering precision medicine research for Asian populations
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Asian people are under-represented in population-based, clinical, and genomic research. To address this gap, we have initiated the Health for Life in Singapore (HELIOS) longitudinal cohort study, comprising comprehensive behavioural, phenotypic, and genomic measurements from 10,004 Asian men and women of Chinese, Indian or Malay background. Phenotyping has been carried out using validated approaches, that are internationally interoperable. Health record linkage enriches both baseline phenotyping and evaluation of prospective outcomes. The integrated multi-omics data include whole-genome and RNA sequencing, quantification of DNA methylation, and metabolomic profiling. Our data reveal extensive lifestyle, physiological, genomic, and molecular diversity between the distinct Asian ethnic groups, and the biological interconnectivity between functional layers. This includes characterisation of divergent patterns of genome regulation between Asian individuals, that correlate with differences in educational attainment, dietary quality, and adiposity, and which overlap transcription factors and DNA methylation sites linked to the development of diabetes and other chronic diseases. Our unique HELIOS Asian Precision Medicine cohort study represents a state-of-the-art platform to enable biomedical researchers to understand the aetiology and pathogenesis of diverse disease outcomes in Asia, and to generate insights that have the potential to improve health outcomes for Asian populations globally.
Date Issued
2026-01-03
Date Acceptance
2025-10-22
Citation
Nature Communications, 2026, 17
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
17
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/41469377
PII: 10.1038/s41467-025-65774-0
Subjects
Humans
Singapore
Precision Medicine
Female
Male
Asian People
DNA Methylation
Middle Aged
Adult
Longitudinal Studies
Life Style
Cohort Studies
Aged
Phenotype
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
1
Date Publish Online
2025-12-30