Million Veteran Program: A mega-biobank to study genetic influences on health and disease
Open accessAbstract
OBJECTIVE: To describe the design and ongoing conduct of the Million Veteran Program (MVP), as an observational cohort study and mega-biobank in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: Data are being collected from participants using questionnaires, the VA electronic health record, and a blood sample for genomic and other testing. Several ongoing projects are linked to MVP, both as peer-reviewed research studies and as activities to help develop an infrastructure for future, broad-based research uses. RESULTS: Formal planning for MVP commenced in 2009; the protocol was approved in 2010, and enrollment began in 2011. As of August 3, 2015, and with a steady state of ≈50 recruiting sites nationwide, N = 397,104 veterans have been enrolled. Among N = 199,348 with currently available genotyping data, most participants (as expected) are male (92.0%) between the ages of 50 and 69 years (55.0%). On the basis of self-reported race, white (77.2%) and African American (13.5%) populations are well represented. CONCLUSIONS: By helping to promote the future integration of genetic testing in health care delivery, including clinical decision making, the MVP is designed to contribute to the development of precision medicine.
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The US Department of Veteran Affairs launched the Million Veteran Program in 2011, aiming to enroll 1 million veterans to contribute to scientific discovery.
“In the USA, the Department of Veteran Affairs launched the Million Veteran Program 88 in 2011, aiming to enroll 1 million veterans to contribute to scientific discovery.”
From Multimodal biomedical AI (2022) · cites this paper as [88]
The chromosome 7 intergenic locus from ISGC stayed significant after conditioning on psychiatric disorders and was independently replicated in the MVP cohort.
“The intergenic locus on chromosome 7 remained significant after conditioning on psychiatric disorders and was independently replicated (p=3.27×10−3) (8) in the Million Veteran Program (MVP) cohort (9).”
From GWAS meta-analysis of suicide attempt: identification of 12 genome-wide significant loci and implication of genetic risks for specific health factors (2023) · cites this paper as [9]
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- Authors
- Gaziano, J. M., Concato, J., Brophy, M., Fiore, L., Pyarajan, S., Breeling, J., Whitbourne, S., Deen, J., Shannon, C., Humphries, D., Guarino, P., Aslan, M., Anderson, D., LaFleur, R., Hammond, T., Schaa, K., Moser, J., Huang, G., Muralidhar, S., Przygodzki, R., & O'Leary, T. J.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Yale University (US)
- Boston University (US)
- VA Boston Healthcare System (US)
- VA Connecticut Healthcare System (US)
- Veterans Health Administration (US)
- Corresponding author
- Concato, John
- ORCID
- Venue
- Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-02
- Volume
- 70
- Pages
- 214-223
- ISSN
- 0895-4356 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1911952697
- Cited by
- 1,055
- References
- 16
- Citations by year
- 2026: 114 · 2025: 142 · 2024: 154 · 2023: 139 · 2022: 137 · 2021: 99 · 2020: 97 · 2019: 68 · 2018: 65 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 1 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 23.81
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
- Kaiser Permanente
- Office of Research and Development
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic Associations and Epidemiology
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Ethics in Clinical Research
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Health, Environment, Cognitive Aging
- Keywords
- Million Veteran Program, biobanks, veterans, genetic epidemiology, precision medicine, electronic health records, genotyping, cohort studies, research infrastructure
- MeSH terms
- Data Collection, Female, Genotype, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Male, Surveys and Questionnaires, Research Design, United States, Veterans, Sequence Analysis, Biological Specimen Banks, Genomics, Electronic Health Records
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