Białystok PLUS - Polish Longitudinal University Study

One of the objectives of this project is to obtain comprehensive information on the health status (including subclinical disorders), genomics, risk factors, health behavior and sociodemographic data from large, representative sample of population of Białystok city inhabitants.

The study will assess many systems, the major emphasis will be given to the most common diseases associated with modern lifestyle (civilization diseases): cardiovascular, metabolic and endocrine, neurodegenerative, neoplastic and pulmonary. There are many interactions between them that might be missed when not analyzed together. Apart from those most common diseases we will also asses others, including allergies, airway dysfunction - both upper and lower, urinary incontinency, gastrointestinal disorders, eye diseases. There may be many common underlying mechanisms of the diseases that now seem to be distant and independent, because of insufficient knowledge.

Health status assessment will refer to many areas of medicine and will include clinical data, medical images, as well as biological samples and voice recording samples. We plan to combine imaging (fundoscopy, ultrasound examinations of heart, vessels, thyroid, liver) with state of the art functional studies (AGE measurement, pulse wave velocity, central pressure, plethysmography with the analysis of diffusing capacity of lung for carbon monoxide and NO concentration, spiroergometry, oral glucose tolerance test.

Voice samples will be analyzed in the speech analysis software, it will help in the diagnosis of civilization diseases such as diabetes, depression, and atherosclerosis.

Participants will fill in detailed questionnaires that will provide information about their family history, dietary habits, socioeconomic status, stress coping strategies, lifestyle, exposure to harmful environment, various symptoms, history of diagnosed diseases and treatment.

The study is designed as prospective, so in the future, additional information on occurrence of diseases or deaths will allow to estimate disease incidence, morbidity or mortality in studied population.