BIONIC
Together with the department of biological psychology of the VU University (NTR study: prof. Dorret Boomsma and prof. Eco de Geus), the department of psychiatry of Amsterdam UMC/VUmc (NESDA study) is part of the national BIONIC project.
The BIObanks Netherlands Internet Collaboration (BIONIC) is an observational cohort study that aims to provide a platform to harmonize phenotypic measures in Dutch biobank cohorts, and to link these phenotypic measures to existing biobank data. The first phenotype that will be addressed in BIONIC is depression. The second aim is to identify SNPs associated with depression in Dutch biobank cohorts.
The phenotyping of major depressive disorder (MDD) will be conducted in existing study cohorts with GWA data from the Netherlands that are united in BBMRI-NL. BBMRI-NL is the Dutch project for biobank collaboration. The participating biobanks of BBMRI-NL invite their participants with a letter (either postal or by e-mail) to complete an online depression instrument.