China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB)

慢性疾病，如中风、心脏病、糖尿病和癌症，是全世界致残和死亡的主要原因。了解在不同人群中导致这些疾病的原因可以改善疾病预防、风险预测和开发新的治疗方法。确定疾病原因的一种方法是通过基于血液的“前瞻性队列”研究，在该研究中，从普通人群中采访和测量大量明显健康的个体，并收集和储存血液，以备将来测试遗传和非遗传生物标志物。然后对研究参与者的健康状况进行“前瞻性”监测，以了解谁会患上什么疾病。当有足够多的人患上某种疾病（“病例”）时，将他们的血液和其他特征与未患该疾病的“对照组”进行比较。我们已经建立了世界上最大的此类研究之一，涉及2004-08年间中国的512,000名成年人。经过10年的随访，积累了大量的疾病结局，与其他生活方式、环境、遗传和血液生物标志物数据一起，将使科学家对许多疾病的遗传和非遗传原因有重要的发现。研究结果将有助于改善疾病的预防、预测和治疗，使全世界人民受益。

Chronic diseases, such as stroke, heart disease, diabetes and cancer, are the leading causes of disability and death worldwide. Understanding what causes these diseases in different populations can lead to improvements in disease prevention, risk prediction and development of new treatments. One way of identifying causes of disease is through blood-based “prospective cohort” studies, in which large numbers of apparently healthy individuals from the general population are interviewed and measured, and have blood collected and stored for future tests of genetic and non-genetic biomarkers. The health status of the study participants is then monitored “prospectively” to see who develops what disease. When sufficiently large numbers of people have developed a particular disease (“cases”), their blood and other characteristics are compared with those from “controls” who have not developed the disease. We have established one of the world’s largest studies of this kind, involving 512,000 adults in China during 2004-08. After 10-year follow-up, large numbers of disease outcomes have been accumulated, which, together with other lifestyle, environment, genetic and blood biomarker data, will enable scientists to make important discoveries about genetic and non-genetic causes of many diseases. The study findings will help improve disease prevention, prediction and treatment, benefiting populations worldwide.