A wide variety of phenotypic information as well as biological samples have been collected for each of the approximately 500,000 UK Biobank participants (Fig. 1). At recruitment, participants provided electronic signed consent, answered questions on socio-demographic, lifestyle and health-related factors, and completed a range of physical measures (see Extended Data Table 1). They also provided blood, urine and saliva samples, which were stored in such a way as to allow many different types of assay to be performed (for example, genetic, proteomic and metabonomic analyses)7. Once recruitment was fully underway, further enhancements were introduced to the assessment visit, including a range of eye measures, an electrocardiograph test, arterial stiffness and a hearing test.
