Li Chenxi, Dite Gillian S, Nguyen Tuong L, Hopper John L, Li Shuai
Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne, 207 Bouverie Street, Carlton, VIC, 3053, Australia.
Children's Hospital Westmead Clinical School, The University of Sydney, 1 King Street, Newtown, NSW, 2042, Australia.
BMC Med. 2025 Mar 26;23(1):181. doi: 10.1186/s12916-025-03998-z.
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.
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.
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). 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.
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.
虽然英国生物银行已广泛用于癌症研究，但其在癌症发病率方面对人群的代表性尚未得到充分研究。
我们对466163名英国生物银行参与者进行了一项前瞻性队列研究，这些参与者在招募时无癌症。通过将参与者的发病率与英国全国发病率进行比较，计算了所有癌症合并以及25种癌症的标准化发病率（SIR）。研究了SIR按年龄、性别和贫困程度测量的变化。
在中位随访期12年期间，47535名参与者被诊断患有癌症。所有癌症合并的SIR为0.90（95%CI：0.89，0.91）。SIR随年龄和贫困程度增加（P = 10）。17种癌症的SIR与1不同（Bonferroni校正P < 0.05）：前列腺癌和黑色素瘤的SIR为1.2，其他15种癌症的SIR范围为0.43至0.93。13种癌症的SIR因贫困程度而异：贫困程度越高，前列腺癌和黑色素瘤的SIR越低，其他11种癌症的SIR越高。
与总体人群相比，英国生物银行参与者的总体癌症发病率低10%，大多数癌症的发病率较低，且随贫困程度增加。无论其原因如何，这些不一致可能会使与绝对癌症风险相关的英国生物银行研究结果产生偏差，例如癌症风险模型的开发和/或验证以及癌症易感基因的外显率估计。
