Available Data

There are several types of data in SIMPLER, and more data is added continuously. Below is a brief description of data.

If you have questions or need exact numbers, for example when preparing applications, you are welcome to contact the SIMPLER Office.

Questionnaire data

Questionnaires with questions concerning health, diet, and life style have been sent to the participants on several occations, starting in 1987 for women and in 1997 for men, with a last follow up in 2019. Please read our pages for Questionnaires and Variable Lists for exact formulations of questions and variables. The variable list includes not only each original variable, but also derived variables on life style, nutrients, energy intake, and suggestions on how to merge variables if needed. In total there are more than 1,000,000 respondents from the beginning of the cohorts, with various drop outs due to age and death over the years.

Clinical data

Clinical data includes biometric data such as height, upper-arm, waist, hip, and calf circumferences, in addition to sagittal measurment. There are also blood pressure measurments, values of glucose and iron levels, and body composition either using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan or bioimpedance scale. Blood collected at the clinical visits has been analysed regarding common clinical chemistry variables such as blood fat levels and CRP. Not only physical factors are documented, participants also answered a mini cognitive test.

Alongside the visit, the participants filled in a questionnaire containing diet and lifestyle questions covering the past month (in comparison to the questionnaires in SMC and COSM covering the past year), as well as a 1-day food diary.

Clinical data is available for almost 13,500 participants with varying coverage. A more detailed source with information on variables and coverage is under construction. If you are interested in clinical data you are welcome to send an email to the SIMPLER Office with your questions.

Register data

The cohorts are matched to a number of registers at the National Board of Health and Welfare on an annual basis, including National Patient Register, National Cause of Death Register, National Prescribed Drug Register, and National Cancer Register for a selected number of variables. SIMPLER also has ethical approval to match against a number of other registers if needed.

For register data there is full coverage for all cohorts.

Genome profile

There are two different kinds of genome profiles: Infinium Global Screening Array (Illumina) and Infinium Oncoarray (Illumina). In the former, there are approxiamtely 41,000 unique profiles. Excluding non-Europeans and related individuals there are approximately 37,000 profiles. In the latter, there are approximately 8,000 profiles.

Proteome profile

Proteome profiles have been analysed using the panels Olink Target 96 CVD II, CVD III and metabolism from Olink Proteomics using Li/Hep blood plasma. The proteome profile covers the clinical participants, approximately 12,500 participants.

Metabolome profile

HPLC/MS

Li/hep blood plasma samples have been screened for untargeted metabolites at Rikard Landberg Lab at Chalmers University of Technology using HPLC/MS. There are approximately 5,000 unidentified substances accessible as a matrix with peak information and a library is being prepared for 200–250 biomarkers. The metabolome profile covers the clinical participants, approximately 13,000 participants.

NMR

Blood serum samples have been screened by Nightingale Health, Finland for metabolic biomarkers using NMR. There are 250 metabolites Excel, 17 kB. (excel-file) availble for approximately 14,500 samples. The data covers the approximately 13,000 clinical participants and includes the second visit of the SMC subcohort in Uppsala.

Metagenome profile

Shotgun metagenomic sequencing of the gut microbiome has been performed by Centre for Translational Microbiome Research, Karolinska Institutet, using DNBseq technology (BGI). The microbiome was profiled for approximately half of the clinical participants, approximately 6,000 participants. The microbial sequences were computationally profiled with MetaPhlAn4 and CHAMP (CM HumAn Microbiome Profiler 2.0, Clinical Microbiomics). A database with species abundances and functions is available.