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Abstract
Purpose Despite data showing breathlessness to be more prevalent in older adults, we have little detail about the severity or multidimensional characteristics of breathlessness and other self-reported measures (such as quality of life and other cardiorespiratory-related symptoms) in this group at the population level. We also know little about the relationship between multidimensional breathlessness, other symptoms, comorbidities and future clinical outcomes such as quality of life, hospitalisation and mortality. This paper reports the design and descriptive findings from the first two waves of a longitudinal prospective cohort study in older adults.
Participants Between 2010 and 2011, 1900 men in a region in southern Sweden aged 65 years were invited to attend for VAScular and Chronic Obstructive Lung disease (VASCOL) baseline (Wave 1) assessments which included physiological measurements, blood sampling and a self-report survey of lifestyle and previous medical conditions. In 2019, follow-up postal survey data (Wave 2) were collected with additional self-report measures for breathlessness, other symptoms and quality of life. At each wave, data are cross-linked with nationwide Swedish registry data of diseases, treatment, hospitalisation and cause of death.
Findings to date 1302/1900 (68%) of invited men participated in Wave 1, which include 56% of all 65-year-old men in the region. 5% reported asthma, 2% chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 56% hypertension, 10% diabetes and 19% had airflow limitation. The VASCOL cohort had comparable characteristics to those of similarly aged men in Sweden. By 2019, 109/1302 (8.4%) had died. 907/1193 (76%) of the remainder participated in Wave 2. Internal data completeness of 95% or more was achieved for most Wave 2 measures.
Future plans A third wave will be conducted within 4 years, and the cohort will be followed through repeated follow-ups planned every fourth year, as well as national registry data of diagnosis, treatments and cause of death.
- geriatric medicine
- epidemiology
- cardiac epidemiology
- public health
Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. The VASCOL research group will consider requests for using de-identified data from the VASCOL study by external collaborators. Also, all requests must be approved by the Sweden’s national ethical review board.
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
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Data availability statement
Data are available upon reasonable request. The VASCOL research group will consider requests for using de-identified data from the VASCOL study by external collaborators. Also, all requests must be approved by the Sweden’s national ethical review board.
Footnotes
Collaborators We welcome researchers from different disciplines and fields for collaboration over the collected data from the VASCOL study, including suggested additional data collection. Interested researchers should submit a study proposal to the corresponding author. All study proposals will be reviewed by the VASCOL research group. All additional objectives not included in this paper must also be approved by the Sweden’s national ethical review board.
Contributors MPE was responsible for the conceptualisation of the wave 2 study and will take the role as principal investigator. Kerstin Ström was responsible for the wave 1 data collection. MPE and MO conducted wave 2 data collection and will collect the data for wave 3 as well as cross-linking data with national registries. MO, MPE wrote the first draft of this cohort profile. GE, DCC, MJ and JS contributed with their research experience and medical knowledge in interpretation of the findings, review and revision of the manuscript draft. All authors approved the final version.
Funding The VASCOL baseline study was funded by the Research Council of Blekinge. MO and MPE was supported by an unrestricted grant from the Swedish Research Council (reference number: 2019-02081).
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Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Refer to the Methods section for further details.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.