The UK Biobank prospective epidemiological study is a study designed to identify imaging markers for a wide variety of diseases. Additionally, a goal of the study is to better understand disease mechanisms.
Here is what is being collected on 100,000 healthy participants who will be tracked over decades:
- Brain structural and functional imaging (fMRI)
- Brain diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)
- Neuropsychological testing, i.e. cognition
- Body and cardiac imaging
- Genetics
- Lifestyle information
- Biomarker phenotyping
- Health records
This ambitious study reminds me of the Framingham study in the U.S. that helped identify a group of risk factors for cardiac and vascular disease.
Some early results from the UK Biobank study of early 5,000 subjects has been published in Nature Neuroscience.
The manuscript shows that the UK Biobank will be a powerful resource in replicating other studies. They reported a initial attempt to replicate an Austrian Stroke Prevention study (ASPS) finding. The UK Biobank data analysis demonstrated changes in brain gray matter on T2* imaging linked to older age, smoking and increased BMI. This finding is felt to demonstrate increased brain iron accumulation with aging and degeneration.
The UK Biobank data results were "highly concordant with the ASPS".
I highly recommend reviewing this early manuscript in the UK Biobank Epidemiological Study. Readers can access the free full-text manuscript by clicking on the PMID link in the citation below. It features a review of the methodology of the study. Numerous important research findings will emerge from this study in the years and decades to come.
The Brits are to be congratulated on such an important and costly effort.
Image of brain is an iPad screen shot from the iPad app 3D Brain.
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Miller KL, Alfaro-Almagro F, Bangerter NK, Thomas DL, Yacoub E, Xu J, Bartsch AJ, Jbabdi S, Sotiropoulos SN, Andersson JL, Griffanti L, Douaud G, Okell TW, Weale P, Dragonu I, Garratt S, Hudson S, Collins R, Jenkinson M, Matthews PM, & Smith SM (2016). Multimodal population brain imaging in the UK Biobank prospective epidemiological study. Nature neuroscience PMID: 27643430
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