The first doctoral thesis based on FinnGen data published

The public examination of the first FinnGen-based doctoral dissertation took place in October, 2021. Warm congratulations to Satu Strausz!
A portrait taken after the dissertation, with Samuli Ripatti, Marju Orho-Melander, Satu Strausz and Tuula Palotie.
From left to right: Samuli Ripatti, Marju Orho-Melander, Satu Strausz and Tuula Palotie.

Satu Strausz, HLL defended her doctoral dissertation entitled "Genetic analysis of obstructive sleep apnoea and its associations to cardiometabolic diseases and COVID-19" in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, on 29 October, 2021. Professor Marju Orho-Melander, Lund University, served as the opponent, and Professor Samuli Ripatti as the custos. The thesis was supervised by Associate Professor Tuula Palotie and Professor Samuli Ripatti.

The thesis concentrated on studying obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) as a risk factor for cardiometabolic comorbidities, the genetic variation between OSA and non-OSA individuals and whether OSA creates an elevated risk for severe COVID-19 disease. The thesis was based on three peer-reviewed articles. These studies were conducted by utilizing large and accurate data sets with an epidemiological and longitudinal ascertainment, and by applying modern genetic methods to show that OSA is a relevant topic during the exceptional times of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

In one of the substudies, Satu Strausz conducted the first large-scale case-control genome-wide association study of OSA with 217,955 FinnGen participants, including 16,761 OSA patients. As a result, she identified five genetic loci associated with OSA. The thesis is available in an electronic format.