Dr. Misa Graff is Research Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. Dr. Graff's research interests focus on the genetics of obesity and cardiovascular disease risk traits, with an overarching goal of integrating understanding of both genetic and environmental risk factors for disease, particularly among minority populations. Dr. Graff's current projects include the genetic epidemiology of weight gain across adolescence into young adulthood; gene-environment interactions across multiple large cohorts; the genetic architecture of adiposity in African Americans and Hispanics; and examination of genetic effects influencing cardiovascular disease risk traits and diseases burdening minority populations.
Recent Publications
- Nagarajan, P, Winkler, TW, Bentley, AR, Miller, CL, Kraja, AT, Schwander, K, Lee, S, Wang, W, Brown, MR, Morrison, JL et al.. A Large-Scale Genome-Wide Study of Gene-Sleep Duration Interactions for Blood Pressure in 811,405 Individuals from Diverse Populations. medRxiv 2024; : . PubMed PMID:38496537 PubMed Central PMC10942520.
- Avery, CL, Howard, AG, Lee, HH, Downie, CG, Lee, MP, Koenigsberg, SH, Ballou, AF, Preuss, MH, Raffield, LM, Yarosh, RA et al.. Branched chain amino acids harbor distinct and often opposing effects on health and disease. Commun Med (Lond) 2023; 3 (1): 172. PubMed PMID:38017291 PubMed Central PMC10684599.
- Bukowski, A, Hoyo, C, Vielot, NA, Graff, M, Kosorok, MR, Brewster, WR, Maguire, RL, Murphy, SK, Nedjai, B, Ladoukakis, E et al.. Epigenome-wide methylation and progression to high-grade cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN2+): a prospective cohort study in the United States. BMC Cancer 2023; 23 (1): 1072. PubMed PMID:37932662 PubMed Central PMC10629205.
- Li, Y, Wong, KY, Howard, AG, Gordon-Larsen, P, Highland, HM, Graff, M, North, KE, Downie, CG, Avery, CL, Yu, B et al.. Mendelian randomization with incomplete measurements on the exposure in the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos. HGG Adv 2024; 5 (1): 100245. PubMed PMID:37817410 PubMed Central PMC10628889.
- Anwar, MY, Graff, M, Highland, HM, Smit, R, Wang, Z, Buchanan, VL, Young, KL, Kenny, EE, Fernandez-Rhodes, L, Liu, S et al.. Assessing efficiency of fine-mapping obesity-associated variants through leveraging ancestry architecture and functional annotation using PAGE and UKBB cohorts. Hum Genet 2023; 142 (10): 1477-1489. PubMed PMID:37658231 .
- Lee, MP, Dimos, SF, Raffield, LM, Wang, Z, Ballou, AF, Downie, CG, Arehart, CH, Correa, A, de Vries, PS, Du, Z et al.. Ancestral diversity in lipoprotein(a) studies helps address evidence gaps. Open Heart 2023; 10 (2): . PubMed PMID:37648373 PubMed Central PMC10471864.
- Sun, Q, Rowland, B, Wang, W, Miller-Fleming, TW, Cox, N, Graff, M, Faucon, A, Shuey, MM, Blue, EE, Auer, P et al.. Genetic examination of hematological parameters in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19. Blood Cells Mol Dis 2023; 103 : 102782. PubMed PMID:37558590 PubMed Central PMC10507673.
- Young, KL, Olshan, AF, Lunetta, K, Graff, M, Williams, LA, Yao, S, Zirpoli, GR, Troester, M, Palmer, JR. Influence of alcohol consumption and alcohol metabolism variants on breast cancer risk among Black women: results from the AMBER consortium. Breast Cancer Res 2023; 25 (1): 66. PubMed PMID:37308906 PubMed Central PMC10259046.
- Selvaraj, MS, Li, X, Li, Z, Pampana, A, Zhang, DY, Park, J, Aslibekyan, S, Bis, JC, Brody, JA, Cade, BE et al.. Whole genome sequence analysis of blood lipid levels in >66,000 individuals. Nat Commun 2022; 13 (1): 5995. PubMed PMID:36220816 PubMed Central PMC9553944.
- Anwar, MY, Baldassari, AR, Polikowsky, HG, Sitlani, CM, Highland, HM, Chami, N, Chen, HH, Graff, M, Howard, AG, Jung, SY et al.. Genetic pleiotropy underpinning adiposity and inflammation in self-identified Hispanic/Latino populations. BMC Med Genomics 2022; 15 (1): 192. PubMed PMID:36088317 PubMed Central PMC9464371.
