Qatar Biobank Cohort Study: Study Design and First Results.

Abstract

The authors describe the design, implementation and results of Qatar Biobank (QBB) for the first 10,000 participants. QBB is a prospective population-based cohort study in Qatar, established in 2012. QBB's primary goal was to establish a cohort accessible to the local and international scientific community providing adequate health data and biological samples enabling evidence-based research. The study design is based on an agnostic hypothesis, collecting data using questionnaires, biological samples, imaging data and omics. QBB aims to recruit 60,000 participants, men and women, adult (age ≥ 18 years) Qataris or long-term residents (≥ 15 years living in Qatar) and follow up with them every 5 years. Currently, QBB has reached the 28% (n=17,065) of the targeted population and more than 2 million biological samples. QBB is a multinational cohort including 33 different nationalities with a relatively young population (mean age, 40.5 years), highly educated (50% university-educated) with high monthly incomes. The four main non-communicable diseases found among QBB population are Dyslipidemia, Diabetes, Hypertension and Asthma with a 30%, 17.3%, 16.7% and 9% prevalence, respectively. QBB repository can provide data and biological samples sufficient to demonstrate valid associations between the genetic and/or environmental exposure and disease development to the scientists worldwide.