Nurses' Health Study (NHS). Homo sapiens

This study was included as part of a GWAS consortium. The Nurses' Health Study (NHS) is comprised of 121,700 married female registered nurses aged 30 to 55 years in 1976 who returned an initial questionnaire. Follow up questionnaires have been regularly mailed and reported health outcomes have been confirmed through medical record review. Extensive follow up has reached a 92% response rate over time. Blood and "swish-and-spit" samples of buccal cells were also collected from participants. Two case-control sets were constructed for genotyping for this project. The first set was comprised of cases of colorectal cancer matched to randomly selected controls who provided a blood sample and were free of colorectal cancer at the same time the colorectal cancer was diagnosed in the cases. The second set was comprised of cases of colorectal cancer matched to randomly selected controls who provided a buccal sample and were free of colorectal cancer at the same time... (for more see dbGaP study page.)