The China Kadoorie Biobank is acquiring genomic data on half a million Chinese participants.
[1] It collected questionnaire and physical data and blood samples on 510,000 men and women aged between 30 and 79 from 10 regions in China between 2004-2008 with the aim of investigating chronic diseases (e.g. heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and cancer).
Participants have been linked to mortality registers and nationwide health systems and a sub-group of 25,000 are retested every few years.
[2] Research based on the biobank published by the American Thoracic Society in 2018 found that respiratory disease hospitalization or death were 36% higher among people who used wood or coal for cooking compared to those who used electricity or gas.
[4] A study published in 2022 examined the relative risk of mortality associated with five individual and combined lifestyle factors - never smoking or quitting not for illness, no excessive alcohol use, being physically active, healthy eating habits, and healthy body shape - and established that they could be associated with substantial gains in life expectancy in the Chinese population.