NHLBI Women’s Health Initiative (WHI)

WHI In dbGAP

On Wednesday January 13, 2010, NCBI released the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) SNP Health Association Resource (SHARe) dataset on dbGAP. The dataset includes extensive phenotypic and genotypic data on 12008 African American and Hispanic women aged 50-79 enrolled in one or more components of the WHI program. Genotyping was done on the Affymetrix 6.0 platform. Information on the dataset are to be found at: dbGAP

Additional release information may be found at: Study Release Notes

Any investigator can apply for access to the dataset through the dbGAP procedures; however, per NIH GWAS policy the WHI investigators have a 12-month protected publication window. WHI investigators welcome collaboration from other investigators within the 12-month protected time and beyond. WHI investigators also invite collaboration on publications and ancillary studies beyond SHARe. Information on how to collaborate with WHI investigators on SHARe and on other WHI resources are found at: WHI Scientific Resources Website

The Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was a major 15-year research program to address the most common causes of death, disability and poor quality of life in postmenopausal women -- cardiovascular disease, cancer, and osteoporosis.

The WHI was launched in 1991 and consisted of a set of clinical trials and an observational study, which together involved 161,808 generally healthy postmenopausal women.

The clinical trials were designed to test the effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy, diet modification, and calcium and vitamin D supplements on heart disease, fractures, and breast and colorectal cancer.

The hormone trial had two studies: the estrogen-plus-progestin study of women with a uterus and the estrogen-alone study of women without a uterus. (Women with a uterus were given progestin in combination with estrogen, a practice known to prevent endometrial cancer.) In both hormone therapy studies, women were randomly assigned to either the hormone medication being studied or to placebo. Those studies have now ended. The women in these studies are now participating in a follow-up phase, which will last until 2010.

If you are a researcher and wish to explore the possibility of using WHI public-use data, please see The Biologic Specimen and Data Repository Coordinating Center (BioLINCC) policy website for information. If you go to the main BioLINCC website you can search on the Women's Health Initiative to see what resources are available.

If you wish to collaborate with a WHI investigator or are interested in applying for future Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) funding please visit the WHI Scientific Resources website.

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NHLBI Women's Health Initiative (WHI)