Lifelines
Overview
Lifelines is a population-based three-generation cohort study and biobank established in 2006 at the University Medical Centre Groningen, enrolling approximately 167,000 participants from the three northern provinces of the Netherlands between 2006 and 2013. It was designed to investigate the interactions between environmental, phenotypic, and genomic factors in the development of chronic diseases and healthy ageing, with data collected at examination visits every four to five years alongside regular questionnaire follow-up. Lifelines was a founding partner of the Dutch national BBMRI node (BBMRI-NL) and participates in the broader European biobanking infrastructure through BBMRI-ERIC.
Data
Data are collected at examination visits and through regular questionnaire follow-up, spanning the following domains:
- Physical measurements cover lung function, ECG, blood pressure, and anthropometry.
- Cognitive and psychiatric assessments are administered at each examination visit.
- Blood biochemistry and multi-omic measurements are derived from biospecimen collection.
- Biological samples include blood, plasma, serum, hair, urine, and faecal material from participants aged 8 and over, held in an automated freezer facility as of 2024.
- Genome-wide association data are available for approximately 15,000 participants as of the 2015 cohort profile, with continued expansion across later rounds.
- Questionnaire data cover lifestyle, socioeconomic, and environmental exposures collected at regular intervals between visits.
Access
Data access is managed through a formal application process via the Lifelines research portal. Requests require submission of a research proposal and are reviewed by the Lifelines data access committee. There is no cost for academic access. Genomics data from the LifeLines-DEEP sub-cohort are additionally available via EGA under accession EGAS00001001704.
Connections
- memberOf: BBMRI-ERIC
- registeredIn: EGA
Resources
- https://www.lifelines.nl/researcher (researcher portal and data access)
- https://catalogue.lifelines.nl (data catalogue)
- https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyu229 (Scholtens et al. 2015 — cohort profile)
- https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyab192 (cohort profile update 2021)