UK Biobank: Past progress and future plans for 2010-2015 renewal application. (360G-Wellcome-093707_Z_10_Z)

Recruitment into UK Biobank of 500,000 men and women aged 40-69 began in April 2007 and will be completed by July 2010. Previous epidemiological studies have typically been characterised by relatively small numbers of disease cases (which may yield unstable estimates due to random variations); inadequate measures of risk factors (which may yield systematic under-estimates of disease associations); inadequate measures of confounders (which often yield over- or under-estimates); and/or retrospecti ve case-control designs in which the disease may influence risk factor levels ( reverse causality ). By contrast, in UK Biobank, extensive questionnaire data, physical measurements and biological samples have been collected from a very large number of participants. During the next 5 years, major activities will involve: careful curation of the participants samples and data; repeat assessments of subsets of the cohort to allow variation in baseline assessments to be taken into account; linkage t o participants medical and other health-related records to identify prevalent and incident disease; and central adjudication of such information to facilitate the efficient, consistent and rapid use of the resource. UK Biobank will also establish processes and systems that support controlled access to the resource so that research groups can exploit its value fully.