A recent cross-NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) Infrastructure Workshop to address women’s health at the University of Birmingham, and Women’s Health Strategy England highlighted the ongoing disparities on disease prevalence and outcomes in metabolic health (e.g. diabetes, obesity) between the sexes. There are also known differences and disparities in treatment efficacy experienced by individuals from different ethnic and socioeconomic groups on health conditions that affect women (e.g. diabetes during pregnancy, polycystic ovary syndrome, pre-eclampsia, postnatal depression). We therefore designed a set of questions addressing such disparities (in collaboration with our Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement groups) that we can begin to tackle using data from the U.K. Biobank. The questions are wide-ranging, and in seeking answers to these we will be able to better understand whether (and if so, how) sex, race, and socioeconomic status impact on:
1) incidence of tumours in the adrenal gland (which are currently underdiagnosed),
2) differences in risk profiles for Type 2 Diabetes and treatment outcomes,
3) impact of genetics on complications associated with Type 2 Diabetes (e.g. fracture risk),
4) biological age in the context of Type 2 Diabetes and/obesity (i.e. whether metabolic diseases are associated with accelerated ageing), and
5) the increase in incidence of headaches, and whether headaches may be associated with metabolic disease.
We will, therefore, be addressing an identified unmet need and the data will allow us to open up areas of research that will impact on public health. We will develop analysis methods and tools that would be useful for, and we would share with, the wider research community. We foresee that the completion of the work packages associated with the questions will take 3+ years to complete, as it will take time to test the hypotheses that we will generate from analysis of the data in the U.K. Biobank.