UK Biobank thanks participants for their continued support of this pioneering study.

Two major publications in the prestigious journal Nature this week focus on the way that UK Biobank genetics and imaging data are transforming health research.

In one paper, researchers report on a pioneering study that combined 10,000 UK Biobank MR brain images with genetics data from all 500,000 participants.

They found a genetic link for some of the most fundamental processes that allow us to think, act and function, from the size of the parts of the central nervous system that control sight, hearing, speech, emotions and actions to the integrity of the communications channels between them and the strength of the signals within. The results will provide a huge impetus to new research for a wide range of degenerative and psychiatric disorders and ultimately improve treatments.

The work is funded primarily by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Wellcome Trust.

“We have had a tantalising glimpse of what could be,” said Professor Steve Smith, Oxford University, who led the study. “These game-changing data stored within the UK Biobank resource, and growing in size and value all the time, will revolutionise our understanding of complex brain disorders.” With 20,000 more participants already scanned and 70,000 still to go UK Biobank would transform understanding.

In particular, the researchers studied 3,144 different measures of brain structure and function, resulting in the discovery of more than 100 areas of the human genome that influence the brain:

• Results revealed the effects of genes coding for a “scaffold for tissue healing” in white matter pathways, affecting diseases such as multiple sclerosis, stroke and motor neuron disease. This scaffold is crucial for the growth of white matter in early life, and for the white matter to heal itself from damage by disease.
• The researchers mapped for the first time the signature of genetic influences on iron deposits in the brain, for genes related to neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers hope the work will lead to new insight into how these diseases progress and damage mental capacity, and also help generate new imaging-based ways to evaluate disease treatments in the future.
• Another finding relates to the effect of the ROBO3 gene on the brain’s white matter pathways. Mutations in the gene mean that pathways that normally connect one side of the brain to the other do not develop properly. This can result in gaze palsy, a disorder which affects the movement of the eyes. It was found that the UK Biobank brain imaging is able to non-invasively localise the effects of this gene to exactly the pathways affected in this disorder.
• The work also localised effects in the brain of genes that have been linked to both early-life brain development and mental health disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.

There was praise for the work from UKRI Chief Executive Professor Sir Mark Walport, and Sara Marshall Head of Clinical Research and Physiological Sciences at Wellcome. “The research published today brings together a combination of genetic and brain imaging data at an unparalleled scale, and allows us to ask questions about common brain disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, depression and Alzheimer’s disease in a completely new way,” she said.

 “Thanks to the vision of UK Biobank’s funders, the altruism of the study participants and the contributions of a large number of scientists who have helped us along the way, UK Biobank is coming of age as a force in health research,” Professor Rory Collins, UK Biobank Principal Investigator said.

View the paper in Nature:

• The UK Biobank collection, Nature 2018
• UK Biobank data on 500,000 people paves way to precision medicine
• Genome-wide association studies of brain imaging phenotypes in UK Biobank

Researchers have found that people exposed to air pollution levels well within UK guidelines have changes in the structure of the heart, similar to those seen in the early stages of heart failure. The research was part-funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) and is published in the journal Circulation. [1]

A team of scientists, led from Queen Mary University of London by Professor Steffen Petersen, studied data from around 4,000 participants in the UK Biobank study. Researchers accessed information provided on their lifestyles, health records and details on where they have lived, so the research team were able to remove patients with underlying heart problems, or those who had moved house during the study. Heart MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) was used to measure the size, weight and function of the participants’ hearts at fixed times. [2]

Even though most participants lived outside major UK cities, there was a clear association between those who lived near loud, busy roads, and were exposed to nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) or PM_2.5 - small particles of air pollution – and the development of larger right and left ventricles in the heart. The ventricles are important pumping chambers in the heart and, although these participants were healthy and had no symptoms, similar heart remodelling is seen in the early stages of heart failure.

Higher exposures to the pollutants were linked to more significant changes in the structure of the heart. For every 1 extra µg per cubic metre of PM_2.5 and for every 10 extra µg per cubic metre of NO₂, the heart enlarges by approximately 1%.

Air pollution is now the largest environmental risk factor linked to deaths in England. Globally, coronary heart disease and stroke account for approximately six in ten (58%) deaths related to outdoor air pollution. This research could help explain exactly how and why air pollution affects the heart.

In the study, average annual exposures to PM_2.5 (8-12µg per cubic metre) were well within UK guidelines (25µg per cubic metre), although they were approaching or past World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines (10µg per cubic metre). The WHO has said that there are no safe limits of PM_2.5. The participants’ average exposure to NO₂ (10-50µg per cubic metre) was approaching and above the equal WHO and UK annual average guidelines (40µg per cubic metre).

Dr Nay Aung who led the data analysis from Queen Mary University of London said: “Although our study was observational and hasn’t yet shown a causal link, we saw significant changes in the heart, even at relatively low levels of air pollution exposure. Our future studies will include data from those living in inner cities like Central Manchester and London, using more in-depth measurements of heart function, and we would expect the findings to be even more pronounced and clinically important.

“Air pollution should be seen as a modifiable risk factor. Doctors and the general public all need to be aware of the their exposure when they think about their heart health, just like they think about their blood pressure, their cholesterol and their weight.”

Mya Steer, 19, lives just outside Bristol, she was diagnosed with an inherited heart condition, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC) just after her 18th birthday:  “My heart condition means that I often struggle to breathe anyway and air pollution makes me feel much worse – it’s pretty instant. This research just goes to show that pollution is affecting us all, whether we live in busy cities or more rural areas where we might feel ‘protected’ from pollution.

“There is no safe limit for air pollution for me, or for anyone who is concerned about their heart health – we all need the Government to do more.”

Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the study said: “We can’t expect people to move home to avoid air pollution – Government and public bodies must be acting right now to make all areas safe and protect the population from these harms.

“What is particularly worrying is that the levels of air pollution, particularly PM_2.5, at which this study saw people with heart remodelling are not even deemed particularly high by the UK Government – this is why we are calling for the WHO guidelines to be adopted. They are less than half of UK legal limits and while we know there are no safe limits for some forms of air pollution, we believe this is a crucial step in protecting the nation’s heart health.

“Having these targets in law will also help to improve the lives of those currently living with heart and circulatory diseases, as we know they are particularly affected by air pollution.”

This research was a collaboration between Queen Mary University of London and the University of Oxford. 

1. Association between ambient air pollution and cardiac morpho-functional phenotypes: Insights from the UK Biobank population imaging study, Aung et al.

2. Ejection fraction is used as a measure of heart function 

Thank you to all the participants who have attended an imaging visit so far. If you would like to find out more about the UK Biobank Imaging Study please visit the imaging website:

https://imaging.ukbiobank.ac.uk/

Imaging researchers react to this milestone:

This globally important resource permits a unique opportunity for world-leading multidisciplinary discovery science, uniquely facilitating analyses across multiple organ systems, combining detailed mechanistic information with the comprehensive imaging, and places the UK at the forefront of biomedical science internationally.

Professor Nick Harvey, Southampton University

It already is 5x larger than the largest population research imaging study conducted anywhere in the world to date.  Such size is essential for gaining sufficient sensitivity to make out the “signatures” of diseases that affect the older UK population well before they happen, when they still can be prevented.

Paul M. Matthews, OBE, MD, DPhil, FRCP, FMedSci

Edmond and Lily Safra Chair,  Division of Brain Sciences, Associate Director, UK Dementia Research Institute

Imperial College London

In the first 25,000 UK Biobank imaging participants, we’ll have scanned 500 people who go on to receive a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s by 2022. This will enable us to identify the signatures of dementia in the brain before individuals begin to get sick.

Professor Karla Miller, FMRIB

During the UK Biobank imaging assessment we ask participants aged over 60 if they will wear a heart monitor for two weeks. This is to measure the occurrence of atrial fibrillation, a common heart disorder that increases the risks for blood clots, heart failure and stroke, all of which could be fatal. Scientists have already used some of this data along with information from other studies to pinpoint 150 genes linked to this disorder – paving the way for better treatments. By detecting atrial fibrillation in its early stages, it could be possible to avoid severe consequences including stroke and heart failure.

You can see read published papers using imaging data on the main UK Biobank website: published papers

View more details on the heart monitor we may ask some participants to wear here: heart monitor

Factors that influence the health of our blood vessels, such as smoking, high blood and pulse pressures, obesity and diabetes, are linked to less healthy brains, according to research published in the European Heart Journal today.

The study examined the associations between seven vascular risk factors and differences in the structures of parts of the brain. The strongest links were with areas of the brain known to be responsible for our more complex thinking skills, and which deteriorate during the development of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

The researchers, led by Dr Simon Cox, a senior research associate at the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh (UK), examined MRI scans of the brains of 9,772 UK Biobank participants, aged between 44 and 79. All had been scanned by a single scanner in Cheadle, Manchester, and most of the participants were from the north-west of England. This is the world’s largest single-scanner study of multiple vascular risk factors and structural brain imaging.

The researchers looked for associations between brain structure and one or more vascular risk factors, which included smoking, high blood pressure, high pulse pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol levels, and obesity as measured by body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio. These have all been linked to complications with the blood supply to the brain, potentially leading to reduced blood flow and the abnormal changes seen in Alzheimer’s disease.

They found that, with the exception of high cholesterol levels, all of the other vascular risk factors were linked to greater brain shrinkage, less grey matter (tissue found mainly on the surface of the brain) and less healthy white matter (tissue in deeper parts of the brain). The more vascular risk factors a person had, the poorer was their brain health.

Dr Cox said: “The large UK Biobank sample allowed us to take a comprehensive look at how each factor was related to many aspects of brain structure. We found that higher vascular risk is linked to worse brain structure, even in adults who were otherwise healthy. These links were just as strong for people in middle-age as they were for those in later life, and the addition of each risk factor increased the size of the association with worse brain health.

“Importantly, the associations between risk factors and brain health and structure were not evenly spread across the whole brain; rather, the areas affected were mainly those known to be linked to our more complex thinking skills and to those areas that show changes in dementia and ‘typical’ Alzheimer’s disease. Although the differences in brain structure were generally quite small, these are only a few possible factors of a potentially huge number of things that might affect brain ageing.”

Smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes were the three vascular risk factors that showed the most consistent associations across all types of brain tissue types measured. High cholesterol levels were not associated with any differences in the MRI scans.

To quantify the size of the differences they observed, Dr Cox explained: “We compared people with the most vascular risk factors with those who had none, matching them for head size, age and sex. We found that, on average, those with the highest vascular risk had around 18ml, or nearly 3%, less volume of grey matter, and one-and-a-half times the damage to their white matter – the brain’s connective tissue – compared to people who had the lowest risk; 18ml is slightly more than a large tablespoon-full, or a bit less than a small, travel-sized toothpaste tube.”

He said that the findings showed the potential of making lifestyle changes to improve brain and cognitive ageing.

“Lifestyle factors are much easier to change than things like your genetic code – both of which seem to affect susceptibility to worse brain and cognitive ageing. Because we found the associations were just as strong in mid-life as they were in later life, it suggests that addressing these factors early might mitigate future negative effects. These findings might provide an additional motivation to improve vascular health beyond respiratory and cardiovascular benefits.”

Limitations of the study include the fact that it does not include people over the age of 79 and that UK Biobank participants tend to live in less deprived areas, which may restrict how the findings can be generalised to other populations. As the researchers were measuring brain structures only, and were not carrying out functional brain imaging or tests of thinking skills, they cannot show in this study how the changes in brain structure might impact cognitive function, but other studies have shown the relationship between increased numbers of vascular risk factors and worse or declining thinking skills, and dementia.

Now the researchers plan to measure the links between vascular risk factors and thinking skills in the UK Biobank participants and in other groups too. In addition, they are following older people, and carrying out multiple scans and tests of thinking skills. They hope this will tell them more about the role that vascular risk factors play in the decline of different types of thinking skills and which areas of the brain are implicated. They also hope that the findings will motivate future work to understand the biological mechanisms through which different sources of vascular risk might be related to different brain areas and tissues.

Read the paper: Associations between vascular risk factors and brain MRI indices in UK Biobank

A new publication in Obesity journal contains groundbreaking data fromAMRA Medical on its ability to predict the occurrence of disease in individual patients based on real-world evidence from the UK Biobank. Individualised data can be used to create virtual control groups and deeply enrich the patient populations selected in a clinical trial.

AMRA utilized medical data from 10,019 participants in the UK Biobank imaging sub-study. Advanced imaging analysis techniques were applied to the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and body composition profiles, containing visceral and abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue, muscle fat infiltration, and liver fat were analyzed for each participant. Algorithms were applied to calculate individualized Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) propensities, or natural inclination, towards these diseases. In addition, the research explored how, in the clinically relevant areas of obesity and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), metabolic disease phenotypes can be identified to describe an individual’s inclination towards CHD and T2D.

AMRA Medical’s CEO, Eric Converse, sees virtual control groups and sub-phenotyping as key milestones for clinical trial optimization and the company’s precision medicine growth: “Individualized phenotyping and disease prediction are the Holy Grail in medicine. A person’s body weight, waist circumference and general appearance may seem ideal. However, our research shows that AMRA analytics taken from a simple MRI scan tells you so much more about what’s going on inside the body and what disease propensities may be lurking. Quite simply – ‘don’t judge a body by its cover.’”

UK Biobank’s Principal Investigator, Professor Rory Collins agrees:
“UK Biobank’s success has allowed us to ask a lot more of our half a million volunteer participants – including inviting them to have full body scans. We have scanned almost 40,000 people and aim for 100,000. It is clear that these pictures are providing incredibly important information to a wide range of scientists who are getting on with the business of improving health. This new work, linking fat distribution and heart health, is based on just 10,000 images. Imagine the power of ten times that number of scans, which we will have in a few years’ time, to improve diagnosis and treatment of disease. We are very grateful to our participants for giving up their time to help create this exciting resource.”

Read the paper: Sub‐phenotyping Metabolic Disorders Using Body Composition: An Individualized, Nonparametric Approach Utilizing Large Data Sets

Factors that influence the health of our blood vessels, such as smoking, high blood and pulse pressures, obesity and diabetes, are linked to less healthy brains, according to research published in the European Heart Journal today.

The study examined the associations between seven vascular risk factors and differences in the structures of parts of the brain. The strongest links were with areas of the brain known to be responsible for our more complex thinking skills, and which deteriorate during the development of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

The researchers, led by Dr Simon Cox, a senior research associate at the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh (UK), examined MRI scans of the brains of 9,772 UK Biobank participants, aged between 44 and 79. All had been scanned by a single scanner in Cheadle, Manchester, and most of the participants were from the north-west of England. This is the world’s largest single-scanner study of multiple vascular risk factors and structural brain imaging.

The researchers looked for associations between brain structure and one or more vascular risk factors, which included smoking, high blood pressure, high pulse pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol levels, and obesity as measured by body mass index (BMI) and waist-hip ratio. These have all been linked to complications with the blood supply to the brain, potentially leading to reduced blood flow and the abnormal changes seen in Alzheimer’s disease.

They found that, with the exception of high cholesterol levels, all of the other vascular risk factors were linked to greater brain shrinkage, less grey matter (tissue found mainly on the surface of the brain) and less healthy white matter (tissue in deeper parts of the brain). The more vascular risk factors a person had, the poorer was their brain health.

“The large UK Biobank sample allowed us to take a comprehensive look at how each factor was related to many aspects of brain structure. We found that higher vascular risk is linked to worse brain structure, even in adults who were otherwise healthy. These links were just as strong for people in middle-age as they were for those in later life, and the addition of each risk factor increased the size of the association with worse brain health.

Dr Simon Cox

“Importantly, the associations between risk factors and brain health and structure were not evenly spread across the whole brain; rather, the areas affected were mainly those known to be linked to our more complex thinking skills and to those areas that show changes in dementia and ‘typical’ Alzheimer’s disease. Although the differences in brain structure were generally quite small, these are only a few possible factors of a potentially huge number of things that might affect brain ageing.”

Smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes were the three vascular risk factors that showed the most consistent associations across all types of brain tissue types measured. High cholesterol levels were not associated with any differences in the MRI scans.

To quantify the size of the differences they observed, Dr Cox explained: “We compared people with the most vascular risk factors with those who had none, matching them for head size, age and sex. We found that, on average, those with the highest vascular risk had around 18ml, or nearly 3%, less volume of grey matter, and one-and-a-half times the damage to their white matter – the brain’s connective tissue – compared to people who had the lowest risk; 18ml is slightly more than a large tablespoon-full, or a bit less than a small, travel-sized toothpaste tube.”

He said that the findings showed the potential of making lifestyle changes to improve brain and cognitive ageing.

“Lifestyle factors are much easier to change than things like your genetic code – both of which seem to affect susceptibility to worse brain and cognitive ageing. Because we found the associations were just as strong in mid-life as they were in later life, it suggests that addressing these factors early might mitigate future negative effects. These findings might provide an additional motivation to improve vascular health beyond respiratory and cardiovascular benefits.”

Limitations of the study include the fact that it does not include people over the age of 79 and that UK Biobank participants tend to live in less deprived areas, which may restrict how the findings can be generalised to other populations. As the researchers were measuring brain structures only, and were not carrying out functional brain imaging or tests of thinking skills, they cannot show in this study how the changes in brain structure might impact cognitive function, but other studies have shown the relationship between increased numbers of vascular risk factors and worse or declining thinking skills, and dementia.

Now the researchers plan to measure the links between vascular risk factors and thinking skills in the UK Biobank participants and in other groups too. In addition, they are following older people, and carrying out multiple scans and tests of thinking skills. They hope this will tell them more about the role that vascular risk factors play in the decline of different types of thinking skills and which areas of the brain are implicated. They also hope that the findings will motivate future work to understand the biological mechanisms through which different sources of vascular risk might be related to different brain areas and tissues.

Read the paper: Associations between vascular risk factors and brain MRI indices in UK Biobank

MRI images from almost 4,000 UK Biobank participants have shown that diabetes causes subtle structural changes to the heart, say scientists. One of the earliest signs of heart disease in people with diabetes may be that all four chambers of the heart become smaller.

The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in Circulation Cardiovascular Imaging, shows for the first time the extent to which diabetes affects the heart muscle.

These early changes in the heart muscle could be used to understand and detect heart damage related to diabetes, allowing action to be taken before the damage can lead to serious heart problems.

Around 4.7 million people are living with diabetes in the UK. Adults with diabetes are up to three times more likely to develop heart and circulatory diseases, and are nearly twice as likely to die from heart disease or stroke as those without diabetes.

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) – a type of scan that uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce detailed images of the inside of the body – to study the hearts of 3,984 people. They compared the hearts of people with diabetes to those without the disease. 

People with diabetes had key differences in all of the heart’s four chambers. The left ventricle – responsible for pumping oxygenated blood around the body – was smaller and the walls were thicker, a change which can lead to heart failure. Surprisingly, the other three chambers of the heart were all also smaller in people with diabetes, with the volume of each chamber shrinking by roughly a teaspoon.

The researchers believe that these changes may be the heart’s way of responding to early, minor damage caused by diabetes. Smaller and thicker hearts have an easier time maintaining the pumping function compared to larger hearts.

Importantly, these subtle changes could be detected before people developed more serious heart muscle damage and related heart diseases. The researchers hope that this information could ultimately be used to detect heart damage early in people with diabetes so that they can be given appropriate medical treatment.

Professor Rory Collins, UK Biobank Principal Investigator, thanks participants for taking part in the imaging study which has taken pictures of the hearts, brains, abdomens and bones of more than 40,000 people so far. Invitations are being sent out currently “but if anyone has had an invite and wasn’t sure about attending, this is a great example of the important research that our imaging study supports,” he said. 

Any participants who have received an invitation and not responded can do so by calling the UK Biobank Participant Resource Centre on freephone 0800 0 276 276 8am-6pm Monday-Friday and 8am-4pm Saturdays. 

Read the published paper: Changes in Cardiac Morphology and Function in Individuals With Diabetes Mellitus

“People with diabetes are around two times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke, and may go on to develop other circulatory problems such as vascular dementia. Combined, these conditions cost the NHS a staggering £1.5 million every hour.

“By understanding the relationship between diabetes and heart disease we’re one step closer to being able to break the link between these two deadly diseases.”

Professor Jeremy Pearson, BHF Associate Medical Director

UK Biobank imaging data has enabled researchers to develop a new method to identify people with low muscle volume and poor functional muscle performance in conditions such as sarcopenia.  This novel method could pave the way to standardised assessment of the condition to better treat patients.

Sarcopenia is a condition characterised by gradual loss of muscle mass and can have disease-related complications, which can greatly affect the quality of life for those with the condition.

Accurately assessing sarcopenia is difficult due to muscle volume and function being influenced by several factors such as age, weight, fitness, pain and disease. Weight is an area which presents an opportunity for improved diagnosis of the condition, as in current definitions sarcopenia is seen to decrease as BMI increases, yet contrarily as BMI increases, functional muscle performance declines.

Researchers accessed MRI scans of the body for 9,600 UK Biobank participants to analyse body composition. Using advanced imaging analytics software they quantified both fat free muscle volume and muscle fat infiltration. These were compared against an innovative measure, a virtual control group matched by sex and BMI to the UK Biobank data.

In line with current healthcare muscle assessments, the clinical value of this new combined method for sarcopenia was evaluated by looking at associations with hand grip strength, walking pace, stair climbing, falls, and health care burden and compared with separate evaluations using either fat-free muscle volume or muscle fat infiltration.

Assessing fat-free muscle volume and muscle fat infiltration through the use of body imaging showed the highest diagnostic performance for detecting low function. It is hoped this method could inform diagnosis practices, enable cross-study comparisons, and further the field of sarcopenia research leading to better treatment for patients.    

UK Biobank has already imaged almost 50,000 participants and is planning to double that number in the next three years. Professor Rory Collins, UK Biobank Principal Investigator, said: “It is encouraging to see important work like this being generated on body images of 10,000 UK Biobank participants. As the technology to do this type of research improves, we anticipate further exciting advances that will help scientists find ways to ensure we live healthier lives for longer.”

 

 

Final steps have been taken preparing for thousands of people in and around Bristol to undergo detailed imaging as part of the world’s largest scanning project.

Two magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, weighing 7 and 5 tons, have been delivered to the purpose built facility in the Patchway area. These will obtain images of participant’s brains, hearts, bones and blood vessels. Building work is nearing completion on the multi-million pound imaging centre which is set to open in the New Year. This is a major enhancement of the UK Biobank project and the biggest of its kind.

UK Biobank recruited 43,000 volunteer participants from the Bristol area in July 2008. Participants agreed to have their health followed to help find out why some people get painful and life threatening diseases, including dementia and cancer, whilst others do not.

“This next phase of the UK Biobank project is the biggest and boldest yet. The project aims to image 100,000 of its half a million volunteers and nearly 50,000 have already been through the procedure in Reading, Manchester and Newcastle.

Adding this detailed extra information from images will help in many ways. For instance, it should identify early changes that increase the risk of developing disease, and it may suggest new ways to slow that process, or to prevent disease altogether.”

Professor Rory Collins, UK Biobank Principal Investigator 

It is hoped that UK Biobank participants, who first volunteered for the project around 11 years ago, will help again to create the most detailed study of its kind ever undertaken. The first participants at the Bristol site are due to be scanned in the early months of next year, with thousands more to follow.

UK Biobank is nearly halfway to its goal of collating 100,000 scans of vital organs to form the world’s largest collection. A Shrewsbury resident became the 30,000th volunteer on Wednesday at the Stockport assessment centre, which supports the work of two other scanning centres. These high quality pictures of hearts, brains, bones and abdomens will be used by scientists to discover why some people develop life-threatening diseases and others do not.

Ms. Lesley Milne, 72, travelled nearly two hours to the assessment centre in greater Manchester. She said:

“Seeing how it’s making huge leaps to improve healthcare for our future generations is the biggest reward anyone could get. I’m so proud to be part of this project!”

Over 38,000 volunteers from Manchester took part in the initial assessment between 2006 and 2013. These participants are being invited for imaging scans of their heart, brain, bones, abdomen and main arteries. Approved scientists use this information to understand how genes, environment and lifestyle choices lead to certain diseases.

Professor Naomi Allen, UK Biobank’s Chief Scientist, said:

“An imaging resource of this scale is unparalleled in the world of health research, and we’re not even halfway through the project. Combining the wealth of information already available from our 500,000 participants – which includes data on lifestyle and genetic factors – with these powerful imaging data will help transform the health of future populations.”

The imaging data allows for a wide range of studies on illnesses like dementia, stroke, heart disease and weakening of the bones and frailty in later life. Researchers will use findings to help discover new ways of treating and preventing these conditions.

“UK Biobank has been truly transformative in the way that research into common diseases is conducted. The breadth and depth of the available data is simply staggering. This accelerates the speed and clinical impact of new discoveries for population benefit… it’s simply amazing!”

Professor Martin Rutter, Professor of Cardiometabolic Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician at Manchester University

The assessment centres in Newcastle and Reading support the work of the main scanning centre in Stockport which have scanned almost 20,000 participants between them. A new centre in Bristol will be open next year to further support the project.