The Swedish Mammography Cohort, SMC

The Swedish Mammography Cohort (SMC) is a large population-based cohort of over 60,000 women in the counties of Uppsala and Västmanland which is performed by the National Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet . The general aim is to assess relationships between a number of modifiable factors (diet, vitamin supplement use, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, body weight, other anthropometric measures etc.) and the occurrence of several major chronic diseases. All women born 1914-1948 who were residing in Västmanland and Uppsala County and in the years 1987-1990 received an invitation to participate in a mammography screening programme were asked to answer a questionnaire about diet and lifestyle. Approximately 66,000 women answered the questionnaire. In the autumn 1997, a second survey was sent to these women to update the information about their eating habits. The study examine associations of environmental/modifiable risk factors with several cancer sites (e.g., breast, colon, rectum, endometrium, ovary, and renal cell cancer), myocardial infarction, stroke, osteoporos

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The Swedish Mammography Cohort (SMC) is a large population-based cohort of over 60,000 women in the counties of Uppsala and Västmanland which is performed by the National Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet . The general aim is to assess relationships between a number of modifiable factors (diet, vitamin supplement use, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, body weight, other anthropometric measures etc.) and the occurrence of several major chronic diseases. All women born 1914-1948 who were residing in Västmanland and Uppsala County and in the years 1987-1990 received an invitation to participate in a mammography screening programme were asked to answer a questionnaire about diet and lifestyle. Approximately 66,000 women answered the questionnaire. In the autumn 1997, a second survey was sent to these women to update the information about their eating habits. The study examine associations of environmental/modifiable risk factors with several cancer sites (e.g., breast, colon, rectum, endometrium, ovary, and renal cell cancer), myocardial infarction, stroke, osteoporosis, cataracts, as well as death causes. All these degenerative diseases appear to have some risk factors in common; therefore the same information about different lifestyle exposures is relevant for studying the etiology of the above mentioned as well as other chronic diseases. The general rationale behind this longitudinal cohort is that prospectively collected exposure information is not influenced by differential recall and selection biases, which might be a problem in case-control studies. By updating exposure data on participants in the cohort, it is possible to take into account the changes in lifestyle factors which might influence estimates of the risks of different diseases. Complete and inexpensive follow-up of the cohorts is obtained through record linkages to the nationwide Cancer Register, the In-Patient Register, and the Death and Population Register. The possibility of such record linkages in Sweden to high quality registers makes our study unique in an international comparison.

During 2003-2009, biomaterial (blood, urine, fat biopsies) and antropometric measures have been collected for 5,022 women who participated in the SMC study. In March 2012 home visits started to the oldest participants in the SMC. Material coresponding to that gathered from the 5,022 women who participated previously is now even collected from some of the oldest participants in the study. Biomaterial is collected from more than 6,500 women.

Participation of the SMC together with other cohorts in the Pooling Project on Diet and Cancer at Harvard Medical School enhances the opportunity to compute relatively precise estimates of risks for common cancers and to study even rare outcomes. Moreover, it facilitates the study of potential interactions, e.g. between nutrients and smoking, which otherwise are difficult to study due to lack of statistical power in individual studies.

Purpose:

The general aim of the Swedish Mammography Cohort (SMC) is to assess relationships between a number of modifiable factors (diet, vitamin supplement use, physical activity, smoking, alcohol, body weight, other anthropometric measures etc.) and the occurrence of several major chronic diseases. Show less..