designed for investigating exposure-disease associations, the lack of representativeness should not be regarded as a limitation (27, 28). As with all observational studies, it is incumbent upon researchers to acknowledge potential sources of bias that might affect the generalizability of exposure-disease associations on a case-by-case basis, such as residual confounding, reverse causation, and self-selection bias (24, 29). Although the UK Biobank Study is still in the early stages as a prospective study, initial publications have shown expected associations of cardiometabolic morbidity, self-reported health, and smoking with mortality risk (30, 31).
