ukbtools: An R package to manage and query UK Biobank data

Ken B Hanscombe, Jonathan R I Coleman, Matthew Traylor and Cathryn M Lewis

PLOS ONE, 2019, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-6

Abstract: Introduction: The UK Biobank (UKB) is a resource that includes detailed health-related data on about 500,000 individuals and is available to the research community. However, several obstacles limit immediate analysis of the data: data files vary in format, may be very large, and have numerical codes for column names. Results: ukbtools removes all the upfront data wrangling required to get a single dataset for statistical analysis. All associated data files are merged into a single dataset with descriptive column names. The package also provides tools to assist in quality control by exploring the primary demographics of subsets of participants; query of disease diagnoses for one or more individuals, and estimating disease frequency relative to a reference variable; and to retrieve genetic metadata. Conclusion: Having a dataset with meaningful variable names, a set of UKB-specific exploratory data analysis tools, disease query functions, and a set of helper functions to explore and write genetic metadata to file, will rapidly enable UKB users to undertake their research.

Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0214311

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214311

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