INSIGHT INTO THE DIET CANCER AND HEALTH COHORT (DCH)

Authors: Pascal Baptiste (WP2 contributor), Mette Sorensen (WP2 contributor)

 

REMEDIA methodological approach is based on 3 steps: data integration, experimental work and computational analyses.

Data integration involves 6 well-designed existing cohorts and population registries:

  • Danish Cancer Health (DCH) cohort
  • Danish hospital registry
  • Norwegian Women and Cancer Cohort (NOWAC) cohort/Tromsø Study
  • ALSPAC cohort (UK)
  • French PELAGIE cohort
  • French Registry of CF patients

This article showcases the involvement of the DCH cohort and the Danish hospital registry in Remedia.

DCH IN A NUTSHELL 

DCH is a Danish prospective population study (prospective means that it follows the participants over time, e.g., for the development of diseases).

Figure 1. (Miriam Sturkenboom)

 

The study aimed at investigating the associations between dietary habits, lifestyle, and cancer development. The participants were recruited during 1993-1997 where 160,725 invitations were sent.

Potential participants were men and women born in Denmark, living in the greater Copenhagen or Aarhus areas, aged 50-64 years, and with no previous cancer diagnosis. In total 57,053 persons were enrolled into the cohort.

At enrolment information via questionnaire was collected on lifestyle: diet, smoking intensity and duration, alcohol and SES: education. Weight, height and waist circumference were measured and biological specimens: blood (DNA, plasma), urine, adipose tissue collected.

Follow up was made possible using the Danish national registries (figure 2). For instance, the Hospital registry (since 1978) allowed the follow up of more than 4000 COPD cases.

Figure 2.

 

Multi-scale exposure modeling was used to gather Environmental exposures: air pollution, traffic noise, surrounding greenness (figure 3).

Figure 3.

 

DCH and REMEDIA

The DCH cohort has been the basis for more than 1000 scientific articles investigating the association between numerous exposures in relation to cancer and other diseases. Regarding respiratory diseases the ELAPSE study (4,928 COPD patients of DCH cohort) showed an association between air pollution (PM 2.5, NO2 and Black Carbon) and COPD (Liu S et al, Env.Int., 2021 figure 4):

Figure 4.

 

Analyses (Longitudinal analyses and Cox Proportional HazardsModel) from DCH data will try to furthermore establish associations between environmental exposures (described in figure 2) and COPD in the whole cohort.

It will also help identify key effect modifiers being part of the exposome such as smoking, population density, type of housing, socio economic status and others.

The internal exposome will be also analyzed with lipidomics and epigenetics.

Statistics Denmark will combine DCH with Norwegian Women and Cancer Cohort (NOWAC) data (also part of Remedia consortium) such as to harmonize questionnaire data and perform pooled analysis.

The DCH cohort plays a vital role in the Remedia project through data harmonization, targeted Omics analysis and exposome modeling using an exposome-wide association study (EWAS) approach.

For more information concerning DCH and publications:

https://www.cancer.dk/dchdata/background/

http://exposome-explorer.iarc.fr/cohorts/20

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17786808/

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.106267