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The Million Women Study: blood collection continues

This is part of the wider Million Women Study, a large cohort study of women’s health funded by Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council. Over 1.3 million women were recruited through NHS breast screening clinics between 1996 and 2001, one in four UK women then aged 50-64. Women in the study are now aged 70 on average, with ~12 years follow-up through medical records and resurvey questionnaires. Our initial focus was on breast cancer in relation to use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT); we are now investigating a wide range of potentially modifiable risk factors in relation to cancer and to other common conditions of middle and old age in women, including vascular, musculoskeletal and neurodegenerative disease.

Since 2006 we have been collecting blood samples from selected women in the study, to add genetic and biochemical factors to our analyses. With participants living throughout England and Scotland, the only feasible way to do this was to ask women’s General Practitioners, and local R&D staff, for help. We are immensely grateful for the positive response we have received - 40,000 blood samples have now been taken for us by practice staff. In the last two years we have published findings on genetic factors in breast cancer, confirming that some recently-identified gene variants have small effects on risk of breast cancer, and showing that these genes act separately from lifestyle risk factors like hormone use and obesity (there is no interaction between the genetic and lifestyle effects).  We are now analysing samples for similar studies of vascular disease.

We are continuing to ask women in the study for blood samples, and if they agree, to write to their GPs for help with sample collection. We provide the woman with a blood collection kit, and she posts the sample back to us, so practice staff are asked only to take the blood sample. A fee per sample is payable.

Details of the Million Women Study are given on our website, www.millionwomenstudy.org. We are happy to answer questions about the study and our blood collection: please contact Dr Jane Green (jane.green@ceu.ox.ac.uk) or the study coordinator Mrs Lynden Guiver (lynden.guiver@ceu.ox.ac.uk).