Enabling dementia research using UK Biobank

External Event - 29th Jun 2023

Time: 13:00- 14:30
Place of event: Webinar

UK Biobank is a 500,000-person prospective longitudinal population-based resource harbouring health records, genetic information and a wealth of fluid biomarker and imaging data, as well as measures of physical health, cognitive and sensory functions. It is uniquely rich amongst open, large population data resources for the extent of the subject phenotyping, which includes in depth, research quality multi-organ clinical imaging currently on more than 60,000 participants

Currently, participants are ~46-85 years old with 15 years follow-up. The numbers of incident dementias in the cohort are rising rapidly from ~5000 in 2020 to 14,000 expected by 2030. Thus, UK Biobank ‘Big Data’ is a prime resource for dementia research, especially to understand risk factors, early disease stages and progression.

In this Webinar, we will highlight possible avenues of dementia research using UK Biobank data. We will discuss how the resource was designed, how it can be accessed and exciting ways that it is being developed to increase its future utility. A diverse group of presenters will showcase their work with UK Biobank, to enable mechanistic gene discovery, risk prediction, early diagnosis and outcomes assessment in dementia research.

Talks:

• Dr Eugene Duff (UK DRI at Imperial): Does SARS-CoV-2 infection trigger neurodegenerative pathology?
• Dr Cynthia Sandor (UK DRI at Cardiff): Wearable devices can identify Parkinson’s disease up to 7 years before clinical diagnosis
• Dr Abbas Deghan (UK DRI at Imperial): Discovery of novel causal genes shared between Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease
• Prof Valentina Escott-Price (UK DRI): Improving the prediction of Alzheimer’s disease
• Prof Naomi Allen (UK Biobank): Principles of design for UK Biobank and implications for its use