CONSTANCES: a general prospective population-based cohort for occupational and environmental epidemiology: cohort profile

Abstract

Why the cohort was set up?CONSTANCES is a general-purpose cohort with a focus on occupational and environmental factors.Cohort participantsCONSTANCES was designed as a randomly selected sample of French adults aged 18–69 years at inception; 200 000 participants will be included.Data collection phasesAt enrolment, the participants are invited to complete questionnaires and to attend a health screening centre (HSC) for a health examination. A biobank will be set up. The follow-up includes an yearly self-administered questionnaire, a periodic visit to an HSC and linkage to social and national health administrative databases.Main types of data collectedData collected for participants include social and demographic characteristics, socioeconomic status, life events and behaviours. Regarding occupational and environmental factors, a wealth of data on organisational, chemical, biological, biomechanical and psychosocial lifelong exposure, as well as residential characteristics, are collected at enrolment and during follow-up. The health data cover a wide spectrum: self-reported health scales, reported prevalent and incident diseases, long-term chronic diseases and hospitalisations, sick-leaves, handicaps, limitations, disabilities and injuries, healthcare usage and services provided, and causes of death.Control of selection effectsTo take into account non-participation and attrition, a random cohort of non-participants was set up and will be followed through the same national databases as participants.Data accessInclusions begun at the end of 2012 and more than 110 000 participants were already included by September 2016. Several projects on occupational and environmental risks already applied to a public call for nested research projects.

Work stress, anthropometry, lung function, blood pressure, and blood-based biomarkers: a cross-sectional study of 43,593 French men and women

“…We included participants of the French CONSTANCES cohort, a general-purpose population-based cohort intended to serve as an open epidemiological research infrastructure 42 , 43 . CONSTANCES was started in 2012 with the aim of collecting data from a total of 200,000 individuals over a 5-year period.…”

Applying two general population job exposure matrices to predict incident carpal tunnel syndrome: A cross-national approach to improve estimation of workplace physical exposures

“…Exposure-disease associations obtained using physical exposures estimated from a JEM were similar to associations obtained from observations of individual workers (12). In a cross-national comparison of exposure estimates, we compared a French JEM based on self-reported physical exposures from a large cohort study (CONSTANCES -Cohorte des consultants des Centres d'examens de santé) (14,15) with the American O*NET JEM based on exposure information provided by expert job analysts and from surveys of workers in different jobs. We found that exposure estimates from these two general population JEM were strongly related, suggesting that results obtained from different general population JEM were likely to be comparable.…”

“…CONSTANCES job exposure matrix. A general population physical exposure JEM was constructed from selfreported data obtained from CONSTANCES, a large cohort study of French salaried workers (14,15). Details of the creation of this JEM have been described in Evanoff et al (7).…”

Erforschung von Erkrankungen in der NAKO Gesundheitsstudie. Die wichtigsten gesundheitlichen Endpunkte und ihre Erfassung

“…Im Vorfeld der Studie wurden thematische Arbeitsgruppen eingerichtet, die unter Sichtung der existierenden Literatur und in Abgleich mit anderen großen Kohortenstudien, wie etwa der britischen"UKBiobank" [7]und derfranzösischen Studie CONSTANCES [8], die Erhebungsmodule entwickelt haben. Diese wurden anschließend hinsichtlich Machbarkeit, Validität und Reliabilität in zahlreichen Pilotstudien überprüft [9], bevor sie in das finale Untersuchungsprogramm übernommen wurden.…”