Launch of AGRICOH website – International Consortium of Agricultural Cohort Studies

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is the coordinating centre for a recently-formed consortium of cohort studies investigating health outcomes in association with a wide range of agricultural exposures. This consortium, named AGRICOH, includes 19 agricultural population cohort studies and three general population cohorts with a significant proportion of farmers. This consortium arose from a 2006 meeting at the National Cancer Institute in the USA, and it was formalized as a consortium at IARC in Lyon, France in October of 2010.

The aim of AGRICOH is to explore opportunities for data harmonization and pooling, and support the study of disease-agricultural exposure associations with larger sample sizes; this is particularly important when studying uncommon exposures such as application of particular pesticide products or rare diseases such as ovarian or testicular cancer, for example.

A dedicated website, http://agricoh.iarc.fr, presents AGRICOH to the scientific community through its public interface, including objectives, descriptions of the cohorts, news about the consortium, and other information. The site will also offer the consortium an electronic work platform through its password-protected area.
Link to AGRICOH website