Understanding Society: Core genetics and epigenetics 2015-2018

Understanding Society collects information about participants’ social and economic circumstances, attitudes and beliefs and it also gathers information about their health. From Wave 1 onwards participants were asked a number of questions about their general health. In Wave 2 and Wave 3 adult participants received a follow-up health assessment visit from a registered nurse. A range of bio-medical measures were collected from around 20000 adults, which included blood pressure, weight, height, waist measurement, body fat, grip strength and lung function. Blood samples were also taken at these visits and frozen for future research. A number of biomarkers have now been extracted from the blood which measure major illnesses in the UK as well as being markers of key physiological systems. A genome wide scan has been conducted on DNA samples from approximately 10000 people, which enables us to examine gene-environment interactions for health and social phenomena. Methylation profiling has been conducted on DNA samples from approximately 1200 individuals from the British Household Panel Survey component of Understanding Society. This is particular important to advance understanding of how people’s social, economic and physical environments over their life time influence their biological processes by altering how their genes work. The health data can be linked to the main survey allowing for a rich set of information on a range of topics.理解社会（Understanding Society）数据集采集了受访者的社会与经济状况、态度与信仰相关信息，同时也收录了其健康相关数据。自第一波调查起，受访者即被问及一系列关于自身总体健康状况的问题。在第二波与第三波调查中，成年受访者接受了由注册护士开展的随访健康评估访视。 研究团队从约2万名成年人中采集了一系列生物医学测量指标，涵盖血压、体重、身高、腰围、体脂、握力与肺功能。上述访视期间还采集了血液样本并予以冷冻保存，以供后续研究使用。目前研究人员已从血液样本中提取出多种生物标志物，这些标志物既可用于检测英国人群中的重大疾病，也可作为关键生理系统的检测指标。 研究人员对约1万名受访者的DNA样本开展了全基因组扫描（Genome-Wide Scan），借此可探究健康与社会相关现象中的基因-环境交互作用。此外，团队还针对“理解社会”数据集下属的英国家庭面板调查（British Household Panel Survey）子模块中约1200名受访者的DNA样本开展了甲基化谱分析（Methylation Profiling）。该分析对于深化人们对其一生中的社会、经济与物理环境如何通过改变基因表达模式进而影响生物过程的理解具有重要意义。 上述健康数据可与主调查数据进行关联，从而可获取覆盖多领域的丰富信息集。