PAGE: Multiethnic Cohort (MEC)

The Multiethnic Cohort (MEC) has established a large biorepository of blood and urine (N=67,000) and cryopreserved lymphocytes (N=15,000) linked to extensive, prospectively collected risk factors (e.g., diet, smoking, physical activity), biomarkers and clinical data for five racial/ethnic groups. This cohort study of over 215,000 men and women in Hawaii and California is unique in that it is population-based and includes large representations of older adults (45-75 yrs at baseline) for five US racial/ethnic groups (Japanese Americans, African Americans, European Americans, Latinos and Native Hawaiians) at varying risks of chronic diseases. Within the PAGE investigation, the MEC proposes to study: 1) diseases for which we have DNA available for large numbers of cases and controls (breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer, diabetes, and obesity); 2) important cancers that are less common (e.g., lung, pancreas, endometrial cancers, NHL) but for which we propose to pool our data with other funded groups; 3) common traits that are risk factors for these diseases (e.g., body mass index/weight, waist-to-hip ratio, height) and 4) relevant disease-associated biomarkers (e.g., fasting insulin and lipids, steroid hormones). The specific aims are: 1) To determine the population-based epidemiologic profile (allele frequency, main effect, heterogeneity by disease characteristics) of putative causal variants in the five racial/ethnic groups in the MEC; 2) for variants displaying effect heterogeneity across ethnic/racial groups, we will utilize differences in LD to identify a more complete spectrum of associated variants at these loci; 3) investigate gene x gene and gene x environment interactions to identify modifiers; 4) examine the associations of putative causal variants with already measured intermediate phenotypes (e.g., plasma insulin, lipids, steroid hormones); and 5) for variants that do not fall within known genes, start to investigate their relationships with gene expression and epigenetic patterns in small genomic studies. This study is part of the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study phs000356.]]>
22,000 participants of European American, African American, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, and Japanese ancestry from the Multiethnic Cohort were studied as part of the PAGE study for Tier1 analyses. The PAGE Tier 1 analyses are high-throughput minimally-curated analyses stratified by race/ethnicity with no covariates. Genotyping was performed at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii using the AB OpenArray platform and at the University of Southern California using the TaqMan platform.
73 SNPs were genotyped for the MEC Tier1 analyses. These SNP were selected to allow for the evaluation of generalization of GWAS findings and the evaluation of epidemiologic architecture of traits of interest to PAGE. These SNPs were tested for association to 58 different traits available within MEC.
]]>The MEC includes approximately 12,000 individuals of ethnicities other than the five targeted groups. These individuals were not included in the biorepository and are often excluded from analyses.]]>
The Multiethnic Cohort consists of 215,251 adult men and women aged 45-75 years at recruitment living in Hawaii and in California (primarily Los Angeles County) with the following ethnic distribution: African-American (16.3%), Latino (22.0%), Japanese-American (26.4%), Native Hawaiian (6.5%), White (22.9%), and other ancestry (5.8%). The sampling frame was driver's license files for Hawaii and Los Angeles, supplemented with Health Care Financing Administration (Medicare) and voter's registration file. Cohort members completed a 26-page mailed questionnaire in 1993-1996 and have been sent periodic follow-up surveys.]]>