The third wave of follow-up is due to start next year. A key element involves participants wearing a wrist-worn accelerometer (like a fitness band) to measure movement across the 24-hour day. Data collected will help to provide insights into the role that sleep, sitting and physical activity play in the development of cancer.
Cohort studies take time, particularly when looking at cancer as an outcome. It will be several years before the ABC Study has collected enough data to begin analysing them. Here we report on a recent analysis (using data from our older cohort study – Health 2020) examining physical activity as a strategy to reduce the risk of developing cancer.
Researchers do not usually return genetic results to research participants, but there is an ethical duty to offer to do this when the genetic information is relevant to the participant’s health. In this article, we explain the ethical responsibility of research studies to return clinically actionable genetic results to study participants.
Biological samples provided by ABC Study participants are managed by the Precision Medicine team at Biobanking Victoria. Throughout the study, participants have provided saliva, poo and blood samples.