Visiting Research Fellow

Aetiology of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders

Has now left the Unit

Work and interests

Dr Hughes was a visiting scientist at the Unit. Her main areas of interest are genetic epidemiology and chronic/cardiovascular disease epidemiology.

Maria has been working with Professor Frank Kee from the Centre of Excellence for Public Health Northern Ireland and Professor Stefan Blankenberg (UKE Hamburg) on genetics projects using prospective cohorts such as MORGAM and the Gutenburg Health Study that aim to find novel genetic associations/biological pathways and explore their wider causal relevance in the development of disease. She also focuses on evaluating novel biomarkers for their ability to improve cardiovascular disease risk prediction in the general population, but is also aiming to refine the use of traditional risk factors for better risk prediction in subgroups such as the elderly through the use of large scale prospective population cohorts (CHANCES consortium). Maria has a particular interest in understanding how changes in biomarker patterns over time (measured using longitudinal datasets) influence the development of cardiovascular disease.

Publications

Selected publications

1. Hughes MF et al, ‘ST2 may not be a useful predictor for incident cardiovascular events, heart failure and mortality’ Heart (2014) Nov;100(21)
2. Hughes M et al, ‘Genetic markers enhance coronary risk prediction in men: the MORGAM prospective cohorts’ PLoS One (2012) 7(7):e40922