Background and motivation

The risk factor pattern for myocardial infarction, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have changed dramatically during the last two decades, from an environment with high levels of cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking, to a scenario dominated by obesity, hypertriglyceridemia and diabetes.

The same era has seen an unparalleled development of imaging and proteomics/metabolomics/genomics (“-omics”) technologies. Consequently, strategies for diagnosis and prevention of cardiopulmonary diseases developed just a few decades ago lack evidence and perhaps also relevance in today’s healthcare.

These strategies have the potential to be dramatically improved by using recently developed advanced imaging techniques that allow direct imaging of the disease process rather than relying on the limited information provided by indirect risk factors, and by using recent developments in large-scale -omics techniques, facilitating the identification of new biomarkers and mechanisms for disease. SCAPIS helps bridge this knowledge gap by assembling a large contemporary cohort study that includes examinations using the latest and most promising techniques.