{"id":456,"date":"2008-09-23T11:39:29","date_gmt":"2008-09-23T10:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=456"},"modified":"2008-09-23T13:27:24","modified_gmt":"2008-09-23T12:27:24","slug":"trish-groves-on-the-only-bank-that%e2%80%99s-growing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/09\/23\/trish-groves-on-the-only-bank-that%e2%80%99s-growing\/","title":{"rendered":"Trish Groves on the (only?) bank that\u2019s growing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Trish I made my deposit this week in UK Biobank<\/a>. I was recruited because my age lies between 40-69 and I live within 10 miles of an assessment centre. At least I do now: like a dodgy business, the centre (on the 3rd floor of a gloomy office next door to Zorba\u2019s Snacks) will be here for six months and then move on to another town. I felt like I\u2019d come to get a fake passport.<\/p>\n

But inside the staff weren\u2019t at all dodgy, and the process was painless. Process is the right word: in 90 minutes I was sized up, bled for my genes and other treasures, and dispatched with impressive and almost industrial efficiency. I ended up with a list of “good”\u201d baseline results (why not “\u201cnormal”, though, a more neutral verdict?) and the feeling that I might end up in table 4 of a future BMJ paper.<\/p>\n

It was fun trying to guess the rationale for some of the questions. Will “Q: do you sometimes speed on the motorway?” “A: sometimes” put me in a risk-taking category and predict my death at 90 from sky-diving? Perhaps it was just an honesty check.<\/p>\n

And why did the computer ask for my parents\u2019 first names and months of births but not their surnames? Not for record linkage, surely, as my surname\u2019s different; and I\u2019d already given their current ages and health status. Nor for sociodemography, as I\u2019d answered the ethnicity questions. Maybe I would get their horoscopes at the end.<\/p>\n

Questions about physical activity prompted mixed feelings – guilt at not doing enough, and amusement at the concept of “heavy DIY” (Ozzy Osbourne trying to put up shelves, maybe?). And did “how often do you use your mobile phone?” cover my frequency of making calls (A: virtually “never”) or sending emails (A: “all the time”)?<\/p>\n

UK Biobank has been promised \u00a361m ( 88; $111m) by the Wellcome Trust<\/a>, the UK Medical Research Council<\/a>, and the UK Department of Health<\/a>. Launched in March 2007 after 8 years\u2019 gestation, this is a grand cohort study with scope for numerous nested case control studies, some of them genomic. Early reactions<\/a>\u00a0to the plan were mixed, with concerns about the study\u2019s commissioning, design, and limits \u2013 would UK Biobank find out too much or too little about the UK population?<\/p>\n

The protocol<\/a>, which is a remarkably good read, allows for a 10% response rate that yields 500 000 middle aged people. The tally on the day I attended was 186 632, according to the web totaliser<\/a>, and there\u2019s still another three years\u2019 recruitment to do.\u00a0 As the 1 in 10, I\u2019ll be followed up through my routine contact with the NHS and, maybe, through further contacts and tests. Over the next 10 years UK Biobank will note whether I get cancer or a common chronic disease. After that \u2013 who knows what it\u2019ll want from me?<\/p>\n

Trish Groves<\/a> is Deputy editor, BMJ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I made my deposit this week in UK Biobank. I was recruited because my age lies between 40-69 and I live within 10 miles of an assessment centre. At least I do now: like a dodgy business, the centre (on the 3rd floor of a gloomy office next door to Zorba\u2019s Snacks) will be here […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[133,435,434],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editors-at-large","tag-genetics","tag-sociodemography","tag-uk-biobank"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}