Want to know what BiSC databases look like?

This October, the BiSC project (Barcelona Life Study Cohort) celebrates six years since its beginnig. This project has had the participation of more than 1000 volunteers, who have contributed from the beginning of the pregnancy until today. Over the years, we have collected a large amount of data on various aspects that provide a comprehensive view of child development.

The data obtained cover areas such as lifestyles, exposure to environmental pollutants, omic data (genomics, transcriptomics, metagenomics, among others), as well as mental health and early neurodevelopment of children. These records provide a solid scientific basis for analyzing how these factors can influence the development and well-being of young children.

An essential part of BiSC is rigorous data management. This involves an ongoing process of collection, organization and structuring, ensuring that the data can be properly analyzed to yield valuable scientific conclusions. The team of data managers has a fundamental role in ensuring that this data is perfectly structured and that any problems that may arise at any stage of the collection or analysis process can be identified and corrected. In addition, we have also worked with data from biological samples, which have been meticulously mapped and organized in the different freezers where they are kept.

At all times, one of the highest priorities of the project is to respect the privacy of the participants. For this reason, all data collected is managed anonymously, strictly following the agreed confidentiality regulations (general data protection regulation, RGPD).

On the other hand, and to ensure that the scientific analyzes can be carried out correctly, it has been necessary to assign a name to each variable and order the databases in such a way that they are easily understandable for the research team. After six years of constant work, we are pleased to announce that these databases are finally structured in an optimal format. If you are interested, it is now possible to consult the codebook, which includes detailed information about the variables, but without personal data, through the following link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13jxksSpspI-U3XAL_m5ir3d6h3AIzQNZ/edit?gid=36938544#gid=36938544

We hope you find this information useful and may allow you to better understand how the project works. In addition, it will be useful for you to be able to check on the great effort that the BiSC families have made, providing a large amount of information for scientific research. We greatly appreciate the dedication of all of you and hope that the work done on this project will build a healthier future for our children.

This news has been written by Pol Jiménez, PhD student in the BiSC project.