The relationship between height of a person and his her risk for a variety of diseases

Height has been a factor associated with multiple common conditions, ranging from heart disease to cancer. But scientists have struggled to determine whether being tall or short is what puts them at risk, or if factors that affect height, like nutrition and socioeconomic status, are actually to blame. In the new study, researchers set out to remove these confounding factors by looking separately at connections between various diseases and a person's actual height, and connections to their predicted height based on their genetics. The team used data from the VA Million Veteran Program, which included genetic and health information from more than 200,000 white adults and more than 50,000 Black adults.