RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Incidental findings on brain imaging and blood tests: results from the first phase of Insight 46, a prospective observational substudy of the 1946 British birth cohort
JF BMJ Open
JO BMJ Open
FD British Medical Journal Publishing Group
SP e029502
DO 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-029502
VO 9
IS 7
A1 Sarah E Keuss
A1 Thomas D Parker
A1 Christopher A Lane
A1 Chandrashekar Hoskote
A1 Sachit Shah
A1 David M Cash
A1 Ashvini Keshavan
A1 Sarah M Buchanan
A1 Heidi Murray-Smith
A1 Andrew Wong
A1 Sarah-Naomi James
A1 Kirsty Lu
A1 Jessica Collins
A1 Daniel G Beasley
A1 Ian B Malone
A1 David L Thomas
A1 Anna Barnes
A1 Marcus Richards
A1 Nick Fox
A1 Jonathan M Schott
YR 2019
UL http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/7/e029502.abstract
AB Objective To summarise the incidental findings detected on brain imaging and blood tests during the first wave of data collection for the Insight 46 study.Design Prospective observational sub-study of a birth cohort.Setting Single-day assessment at a research centre in London, UK.Participants 502 individuals were recruited from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD), the 1946 British birth cohort, based on pre-specified eligibility criteria; mean age was 70.7 (SD: 0.7) and 49% were female.Outcome measures Data regarding the number and types of incidental findings were summarised as counts and percentages, and 95% confidence intervals were calculated.Results 93.8% of participants completed a brain scan (n=471); 4.5% of scanned participants had a pre-defined reportable abnormality on brain MRI (n=21); suspected vascular malformations and suspected intracranial mass lesions were present in 1.9% (n=9) and 1.5% (n=7) respectively; suspected cerebral aneurysms were the single most common vascular abnormality, affecting 1.1% of participants (n=5), and suspected meningiomas were the most common intracranial lesion, affecting 0.6% of participants (n=3); 34.6% of participants had at least one abnormality on clinical blood tests (n=169), but few reached the prespecified threshold for urgent action (n=11).Conclusions In older adults, aged 69-71 years, potentially serious brain MRI findings were detected in around 5% of participants, and clinical blood test abnormalities were present in around one third of participants. Knowledge of the expected prevalence of incidental findings in the general population at this age is useful in both research and clinical settings.