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What’s New With the OHS?

Since 2010, the Ontario Health Study (OHS) has been working hard to build a platform for chronic disease research. Working together with the research community and Ontarians across the province we are now following the health of about 225,000 people and have collected more than 40,000 blood samples. We’re building a database of health information and a biobank so researchers can better understand the link between genetics, lifestyle and environment—and the role they play in our health.

In this section, you’ll find information about the various Study activities and upcoming initiatives.

Blood tubes in the laboratory centrifuge

OHS data included in multi-study analysis of Canada’s “Omicron tsunami”

Jul 20, 2022 // Study Updates

Omicron tsunami: Blood spot samples from thousands of OHS participants were included in a multi-study analysis showing the proportion of Canadians with antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 due to infection shot up, from 5.1 per cent just before the Delta variant wave (August, 2021), to 55.7 per cent in the five months after the Omicron wave (May,

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The Ontario Health Study Newsletter, June 2022

Jun 20, 2022 // OHS Newsletter

In this issue: • Is there a link between some physically demanding jobs and a risk for lung cancer?  • Confluence Project aims to double sample sizes of international study • A 10+ year update on Canada’s largest health research platform • Why isn’t there an accepted COVID antibody range?  • Why did you participate

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CanPath Webinar: Trainee Research: Using Population Cohorts to Enable Early Cancer Detection

Jun 16, 2022 // Study Updates

Nicholas Cheng provides an overview of his study on identifying early cancer biomarkers in pre-diagnosis blood samples collected from more than 400 OHS participants. He demonstrates how blood signatures can be used to detect breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers years prior to clinical detection using cfDNA methylation profiles. Kimberly Skead describes her work studying how the interacting

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