Biobanks collaboration
27 October 2005
A unique agreement to share information, signed today between the giant British and Norwegian population health studies known as biobanks, aims to help scientists unlock the causes of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) schizophrenia and diabetes.
The collaboration allows the teams to replicate findings in different societies, together covering much of the spectrum of what needs to be found out about the determinants of health and growth in childhood.
The initiative was signed at the Science Museum in London, in the presence of HRH Prince Haakon of Norway.
It will bring together epidemiologists from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health – currently recruiting the world's largest parent and baby health study as well as 'Cohort Norway', a cohort of 200 000 adults – and Bristol University's 'Children of the 90s' project, together with the UK Biobank which will analyse adult samples from next year.
The Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Dr Camilla Stoltenberg, Director of Epidemiology at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Professor George Davey Smith, who will shortly take over responsibility for the Bristol study, and Professor Rory Collins, chief executive of UK Biobank.
The Bristol study – ALSPAC or Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (also known as Children of the 90s) – is probably the most comprehensive research project into child health ever undertaken. Funded by the Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and University of Bristol, it began in 1991 and is following 14 000 mothers and children in detail to trace links between their way of life and disease. Since then it has become the leading birth cohort in the world, with extensive data on health, education and development from birth to age 15.
The Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa), meanwhile, is still being recruited. The aim is to enlist 100 000 pregnant mothers, their partners, and consecutively their babies by 2008, eventually making it the largest parent and child follow-up study ever. MoBa will bring together biological specimens, questionnaire data and registry data, to investigate the interplay between genes and environmental factors, such as infections, toxics and diet.
The UK Biobank project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, Department of Health and the Scottish Executive, is due to get underway in 2006 when it will begin to gather information on the health and lifestyle of 500 000 volunteers aged 40-69. Each participant will be asked to donate a blood and urine sample and complete a lifestyle questionnaire. Over the next 20-30 years, UK Biobank will study the progression of diseases including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease.
See also
- UK Biobank gets new Chief Executive and Principal Investigator (News: 8 August 2005)
- New UK Biobank Ethics and Governance Council website (News: 29 April 2005)