Epidemiology (Institute)

The Institute is not involved in patient care.

The institute hosts one of the 18 study centers of the German National Cohort, the largest population-based cohort study in Germany, including a total of 205,000 participants nationwide, with comprehensive clinical and physiological phenotyping and biosampling (nako. de). Currently, in addition to leading the NAKO study center in Kiel, Prof. Lieb also serves on the Board of Directors (Vorstand) of the German National Cohort.

Supported by Funding of the DFG Excellence Cluster EXC 2167 “Precision Medicine in Inflammation”, the institute also builds a Family cohort for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in order to better understand the precursors of IBD and its familial risks.

Since 2020, the institute is also involved in estab- lishing a large cohort of patients after SARS-CoV-2-infection with and without Long-Covid-Syndrome (COVIDOM-Study; www.covidom.de). Furthermore, the institute aims to improve our understanding of the contributions of molecular/genetic and lifestyle factors (e.g. nutrition and physical activity) to IBD, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Lectures and seminars for medical students, for pharmacy students and for master’s students within the “Medical Life Science” program at Kiel University, with an emphasis on epidemiology, planning, conduct and analyses of studies/study design, cardiovascular epidemiology, pharmaco-epidemiology.

The institute hosts the popgen Biobank (www.popgen.de), one of the largest academic biobanks in Northern Germany, and is also part of the PopGen 2.0 Bioban- king Network (P2N; www.uksh.de/p2n) which en- compasses 10 Biobanks and coordinates major biobanking activities at the Kiel Campus of the UKSH and at the Research Center Borstel.