China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) of 0.5 million adults. (360G-Wellcome-104085_Z_14_Z)

CKB is one of the worlds largest blood-based prospective studies of the environmental and genetic determinants of chronic disease. During 2004-8, 510,000 adults from 10 localities across China were enrolled, with extensive data collection by questionnaire and physical measurement. Biological samples were stored for future research, and separately funded DNA extraction is underway. Funding is requested over the next 5 years to support: continued follow-up of cause-specific morbidity and mortality and electronic linkage to hospital records through nationwide health insurance systems; detailed event adjudication for diseases of major interest; management, analysis and curation of multidimensional data; resurvey of 25,000 participants. Support is also sought for well-powered nested case-control studies of scan-confirmed stroke, which is the commonest disease in China, using genome-wide association analysis of DNA and NMR-based multi-omic analyses of plasma biomarkers. By 1.1.2013, details of 1.2 million fatal and non-fatal hospitalised events (including 30,000 strokes) were encoded, which will yield reliable information about the effects of many different blood and non-blood-related (e.g. smoking, alcohol, adiposity, blood pressure, reproductive patterns) factors on many different diseases in this population. Much of what is discovered in CKB will be of general relevance for better understanding of disease aetiology in other populations.