UK Biobank opens
30 Mar 2012 by Evoluted New Media
UK Biobank – a key resource for health research – opens today with more than 1,000 separate pieces of information from over half a million Britons.
It currently contains around 20 terabytes of information and is expected to advance research into the causes, prevention and treatment of a number of chronic, painful and life-threatening illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and stroke.
“This is without a doubt a very exciting day for medical research, not just in the UK but around the world,” said Professor Sir Rory Collins of the University of Oxford, and the Biobank’s principal investigator.
“We are grateful to participants for their trust and support so far. But they have not joined the project to see it remain idle; we all want to see the resources used extensively to bring about benefits to health and wellbeing.”
Among the 500,000 volunteers – people in their forties, fifties and sixties from around the country – were 26,000 diabetics, 50,000 with joint disorders, 41,000 teetotallers and 11,000 heart attack patients.
Measurements of the volunteers’ height, weight, body fat, hand grip strength, bone density, lung function and blood pressure were taken, along with information about medical histories and lifestyle. They also recorded memory, diet, early life factors and psychosocial events, and the last 100,000 participants also had hearing, fitness and eye tests.
This information will grow further as the volunteers’ health is followed over many years and stored samples are analysed. If a plan for imaging studies of a fifth of participants –100,000 people – goes ahead, it would add ten times more information. Some participants will be asked to wear an activity monitor for a week, and there are 400,000 responses to an online follow-up diet questionnaire to analyse.
Scientists hope to find out why some people develop particular diseases in mid-to-later life, while others do not. Scientists from the UK and abroad will be able to use the Biobank irrespective of whether they are from academia, industry, charity or government-funded – subject to checks that the research is health-related and in the public interest, and only information that does not identify participants will be provided.
UK Biobank is funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council, Department of Health, Scottish Government, Welsh Government and the British Heart Foundation.
