Environmental metals are emerging risk factors for cardiovascular disease, and other health conditions such as cancer, renal, bone, respiratory and neurological diseases. ¹ The biological mechanisms and underlying gene-environment effects of metal exposures are not yet well understood. The Metal-GWAS Initiative is an international cooperative effort focused on exploring genetic basis of metal exposure biomarkers, which will enable a deeper understanding of metal-related disease.

The Metal-GWAS can facilitate:

1. To entertain pooled-cohorts genome-wide association studies of metal exposure biomarkers.
2. To point to interesting biological pathways for potential health effects of metals, through integrative post-GWAS analysis.
3. To create the necessary structure to enable the participating cohorts to entertain large collaborative efforts to assess, in the most possible robust and reproducible way, potential metal- related health effects and associated gene-environment interactions.