King’s College London and ZOE are seeking 250,000 volunteers for a UK-wide study that will track diet, lifestyle and health over time as researchers investigate why bowel cancer is becoming more common among younger adults.
The PROSPECT-UK study is designed to examine possible links between what people eat, their daily habits, gut health, environmental exposures and later health outcomes. It is not a screening programme or a treatment trial. Researchers say the reasons for the rise remain unclear, and the study is intended to identify patterns for further investigation rather than declare a cause.
People aged 18 and over who live in the UK are being invited to take part. The central research team is based at King’s College London and works with ZOE. The large recruitment target reflects the challenge of studying early-onset bowel cancer: although rates are rising, the disease remains much more common in older adults. More than nine in ten bowel-cancer cases occur in people over 50.
Incidence among people aged 25 to 49 in the UK has risen by more than half since the early 1990s. That increase does not explain why cases are rising. Researchers have said that changes in diet, lifestyle and surroundings could be relevant, but there is not yet enough evidence to identify any one factor as a driver.
What participants will be asked to do
Participants will complete online questionnaires covering diet, lifestyle, environment, health and other factors. The research team plans to follow information over time and will ask participants for permission to connect their responses with electronic health records. That linkage is intended to let researchers compare reported exposures with later health outcomes, including cancer diagnoses.
A smaller group will be invited to provide more detailed information. This may include digital food diaries and blood and stool samples. The study’s information page also says some participants may be asked for saliva samples. These additional tasks will not apply to everyone.
One feature of the project is its attempt to record food at brand level rather than rely only on broad categories. Foods grouped together as highly processed can differ in their ingredients, processing and nutritional content. Researchers say more detailed records may help them examine whether particular foods or patterns are associated with disease risk.
An association would not, by itself, show that a food caused cancer. Participants are not being assigned diets, and the study does not test a treatment. It is observational: researchers collect information about people’s lives and compare it with health outcomes. Other influences, including genetics and biology, may also matter, and the wider international research effort is examining factors beyond those captured by this UK study.
The study page says surveys will be repeated and that results will take time to emerge. Participation is voluntary, and people can leave the sub-study. The research team says there is no direct personal benefit from taking part beyond contributing to scientific research. The immediate aim is to build a large, detailed dataset that may help narrow the questions future studies need to answer.
For now, the recruitment call is an invitation to contribute information, not evidence that a particular food, habit or exposure explains the increase in bowel cancer among younger adults.
