Swedish Infrastructure for Medical Population-Based Life-Course and Environmental Research (SIMPLER)

Swedish Infrastructure for Medical Population-Based Life-Course and Environmental Research (SIMPLER) is a national research infrastructure consisting of an individual database and biobank for both hypothesis- and data-driven epidemiological research. Two population-based cohorts (the Swedish Mammography Cohort and Cohort of Swedish Men) comprise the database, with about 110,000 people from Uppsala, Västmanland and Örebro counties born 1914–1952. Data collection from participants has been continuous since 1987 through regular mailings of questionnaires and surveys with the collection of samples (blood, urine, fat biopsies and faeces) and linking to register-based data. A biobank with DNA and other biological samples is available from a large percentage of the participants. A genome-wide association study (GWAS), which also included proteomic and metabolomic data, has been carried out on 50,000 individuals.

Uppsala University hosts SIMPLER and the other participating universities are Chalmers University of Technology, Karolinska Institutet and Örebro University.

The Council for Research Infrastructures (RFI) funds this research infrastructure, which the Swedish Research Council considers to be in the national interest.

Related information

Swedish Infrastructure for Medical Population-Based Life-Course and Environmental Research (SIMPLER) website