The addition of biomarker data to the SHARE cohort provides a valuable resource for studying the intersection of socioeconomic factors and age-related health conditions.
SHARE, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, is the largest population-based panel survey among people aged 50+ in 28 European countries and Israel. It investigates health, economic and social circumstances over the life-course to shed light on the challenges of population ageing. From 2004 until 2023, more than 615,000 in-depth interviews with 160,000 respondents have been conducted in nine survey waves. Health is crucial to understand ageing. Gold-standard measures are based on blood. SHARE therefore collected dried blood spot (DBS) samples in 12 countries during Wave 6 in 2015. Approximately 27,200 respondents consented (67%). DBS samples were analysed for overall 21 blood biomarkers in three distinct sets (conventional, cytokine and neurodegenerative biomarkers) between 2017 and 2025. The collection of blood-based health data expands SHAREs socioeconomic focus with epidemiological insights. SHARE has sparked many collaborations since 2004, and we expect the new biomarker data to inspire further collaborative biomarker projects and data sharing.
Boersch-Supan et al. (Fri,) studied this question.