Cancer incidence inconsistency between UK Biobank participants and the population: a prospective cohort study.

IF 7 1区医学 Q1 MEDICINE, GENERAL & INTERNAL

BMC Medicine Pub Date : 2025-03-26 DOI:10.1186/s12916-025-03998-z

Chenxi Li, Gillian S Dite, Tuong L Nguyen, John L Hopper, Shuai Li

{"title":"Cancer incidence inconsistency between UK Biobank participants and the population: a prospective cohort study.","authors":"Chenxi Li, Gillian S Dite, Tuong L Nguyen, John L Hopper, Shuai Li","doi":"10.1186/s12916-025-03998-z","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Background: While the UK Biobank has been widely used for cancer research, its representativeness of the population in terms of cancer incidence has not been thoroughly investigated.Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of 466,163 UK Biobank participants who were cancer-free at recruitment. Standardised incidence ratios (SIRs) were calculated for all cancers combined and for 25 cancers, by comparing incidences for the participants with the UK national incidences. Variations in SIR by age, sex and deprivation measures were investigated.Results: Over a median follow-up period of 12 years, 47,535 participants had a cancer diagnosis. The SIR for all cancers combined was 0.90 (95% CI: 0.89, 0.91). The SIR increased with age and deprivation (P = 10-9). The SIRs of 17 cancers differed from 1 (Bonferroni-adjusted P < 0.05): for prostate cancer and melanoma the SIRs were 1.2 and for the other 15 cancers the SIRs ranged from 0.43 to 0.93. The SIRs of 13 cancers differed by deprivation: the greater the deprivation, the lower the SIRs for prostate cancer and melanoma, and the higher the SIRs for the other 11 cancers.Conclusions: The overall cancer incidence was 10% lower for the UK Biobank participants compared with the population, with most cancers having a lower incidence that increased with deprivation. Irrespective of their causes, the inconsistencies could bias UK Biobank research results related to absolute cancer risks, such as the development and/or validation of cancer risk models and penetrance estimates for cancer susceptibility genes.","PeriodicalId":9188,"journal":{"name":"BMC Medicine","volume":"23 1","pages":"181"},"PeriodicalIF":7.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11948887/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"BMC Medicine","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-025-03998-z","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"MEDICINE, GENERAL & INTERNAL","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: While the UK Biobank has been widely used for cancer research, its representativeness of the population in terms of cancer incidence has not been thoroughly investigated.

Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of 466,163 UK Biobank participants who were cancer-free at recruitment. Standardised incidence ratios (SIRs) were calculated for all cancers combined and for 25 cancers, by comparing incidences for the participants with the UK national incidences. Variations in SIR by age, sex and deprivation measures were investigated.

Results: Over a median follow-up period of 12 years, 47,535 participants had a cancer diagnosis. The SIR for all cancers combined was 0.90 (95% CI: 0.89, 0.91). The SIR increased with age and deprivation (P = 10^-9). The SIRs of 17 cancers differed from 1 (Bonferroni-adjusted P < 0.05): for prostate cancer and melanoma the SIRs were 1.2 and for the other 15 cancers the SIRs ranged from 0.43 to 0.93. The SIRs of 13 cancers differed by deprivation: the greater the deprivation, the lower the SIRs for prostate cancer and melanoma, and the higher the SIRs for the other 11 cancers.

Conclusions: The overall cancer incidence was 10% lower for the UK Biobank participants compared with the population, with most cancers having a lower incidence that increased with deprivation. Irrespective of their causes, the inconsistencies could bias UK Biobank research results related to absolute cancer risks, such as the development and/or validation of cancer risk models and penetrance estimates for cancer susceptibility genes.

查看原文本刊更多论文

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

BMC Medicine 医学-医学：内科

CiteScore

13.10

自引率

1.10%

发文量

435

审稿时长

4-8 weeks

期刊介绍： BMC Medicine is an open access, transparent peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is the flagship journal of the BMC series and publishes outstanding and influential research in various areas including clinical practice, translational medicine, medical and health advances, public health, global health, policy, and general topics of interest to the biomedical and sociomedical professional communities. In addition to research articles, the journal also publishes stimulating debates, reviews, unique forum articles, and concise tutorials. All articles published in BMC Medicine are included in various databases such as Biological Abstracts, BIOSIS, CAS, Citebase, Current contents, DOAJ, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed, Science Citation Index Expanded, OAIster, SCImago, Scopus, SOCOLAR, and Zetoc.