Health researchers from the University are to play a key role in an ambitious national project to scan the bones, hearts and brains of 100,000 middle-aged people.
The £40 million UK Biobank imaging project, which launches today, Thursday 14 April, will provide new perspectives on the best way to prevent and treat multi-faceted conditions that tend to strike in mid to later life, such as arthritis, coronary heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis.
Bone expert, Nicholas Harvey, Professor of Rheumatology and Clinical Epidemiology at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, leads the musculoskeletal component of study.
UK Biobank has already recruited 500,000 volunteer participants to create a world-leading health research resource. It now proposes to scan one in five of them, to create the biggest scanning study ever undertaken, 10 times larger than any previous study.
The scans obtained will comprise a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) assessment (yielding information on bone density, osteoarthritis and the amount of fat and muscle in the body), together with MRIs of the brain, heart and abdomen, and ultrasound examination of the major arteries of the neck.
Professor Harvey hopes that the study will help to prevent the huge burden of broken bones resulting from osteoporosis, a significant health issue that costs the UK economy more than £3 billion a year.
“One in two women and one in five men over 50 years of age will suffer a broken bone due to osteoporosis, and this has major consequences for their quality of life.
“It is critically important that we develop new ways to prevent and treat this devastating condition, and the UK Biobank imaging study will provide much needed opportunities for crucial future research.”
More information about the UK Biobank can be found here.