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Article History

Received: 6 March 2025

Accepted: 26 June 2025

First Online: 8 August 2025

Declarations

:

: Ethics Approval.The data collection in the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) procedures are subject to continuous ethics review. SHARE-ERIC’s activities related to human subjects’ research are guided by international research ethics principles such as the Respect Code of Practice for Socio-Economic Research (professional and ethical guidelines for the conduct of socio-economic research) and the ‘Declaration of Helsinki’ []. The collection of blood samples was approved by the national ethics committee of all participating countries and the ethics committee of the Max Planck Society; in 2021 the Max Planck Society’s ethics committee states:“Numerous approvals and votes by other ethics committees in the participating SHARE countries – in particular, with regard to the international sampling and analysis of dried blood spots in Wave 6 – have confirmed the project to be compliant with relevant legal, especially statutory norms, as well as with research-ethical guidelines, e.g., the set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation developed for the medical community by the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki, last revised at the 64th WMA Meeting held in Fortalezza/Brazil in October 2013.” []).The full list of ethics committees is as follows:Sweden: The Regional Research Ethics Board in Umeå.Estonia: Tallinn Medical Research Ethics Committee.Denmark: The Research Ethics Committee of the Region of Southern Denmark.Belgium: The Ethics Committee of Antwerp University Hospital.Germany: The Ethics Council of the Max Planck Society.Switzerland: The Ethics Committee of the Canton of Vaud.France: The Ethics Committee of the Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpètrière (CPP).Slovenia: The central National Medical Ethics Committee.Italy: The Research Ethics Committee of the Milano-Bicocca University.Spain: CEIC-IAS (Ethics Committee of the Institut d’Assistència Sanitària).Greece: The Research Ethics Committee of the University of Crete.Israel: The Institutional Ethics Committee of the Hadassah Medical Organisation, Jerusalem.in Blood Collection.For blood sample collection, obtaining informed written consent was obligatory in all participating countries. However, the countries differed regarding the information that had to be provided to the respondents and regarding the content and form of the consent documents. In some countries (Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, Sweden) the respondents had to be informed about the blood taking with an advance letter; in other countries it was sufficient to inform the respondents during the interview prior to the planned DBS collection.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.