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Convenience sample of centenarians, their siblings, offspring, spouses and a control sample consisting of people born around same time as offspring but who do not have parents surviving beyond average life expectancy for their birth cohort. Age range 40-119 years, with ~2500 centenarians in the sample including 600 semi-supercentenarians (ages 105-109) and 200 supercentenarians (ages 110+ years).

We collect the below listed data at enrolment and then collect vital status, hospitalization, changes in meds and diagnoses, cognitive function (TICS) and physical function (IADS, ADL) over the phone, annually. Local subjects are asked to undergo annual detailed cognitive function testing in person with ultimately, brain donation. Blood sample collected at enrolment for DNA, RNA and plasma for biomarkers and storage.

Study is open to collaborations. Please contact Dr. Perls

The Nurses’ Health Study is a longitudinal population study aimed initially to examine the relation between the use of oral contraceptives, cigarette smoking, and risk of major illnesses in women, mainly cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Since then, the study broadened to include the evaluation of health consequences of many lifestyle practices, including diet, physical activity, and specific forms of hormone therapy.

The participants are registered nurses, aged 30 to 55 years and married at the time of recruitment in 1976, and who lived in the 11 most populous states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas).

Tracking Parkinson’s, or the PRoBaND study, is a UK-based study of Parkinson’s disease funded entirely by Parkinson’s UK.

There is a wide variation of symptoms and features of Parkinson’s driven by both genetic and external factors.  Our study aims to define and explain these variations by analysing the clinical expression of Parkinson’s in relation to genotypic variation. Tracking Parkinson’s is a multi-centre prospective longitudinal study, informed by epidemiological and biomarker data.

Participants were recruited into three categories:

  • Recent onset patients (diagnosed within the last three years) are followed up at 6-month intervals for four years, then every 18-months for a further three years.
  • Early onset (patients diagnosed before the age of 50) were followed up at one year.
  • Relatives (siblings) of the participants are followed up after three years.

Since 2012, we have been running at 70 sites across the UK.  Recruitment closed in November 2017 and our cohort consists of 2,270 people with Parkinson’s and 344 of their siblings.

NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde is the study Sponsor and the coordinating study centre is based at the Institute of Neuroscience & Psychology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

The Stockholm Birth Cohort Study (SBC) was created in 2004/2005 by a probability matching of two comprehensive and longitudinal datasets. The first, the Stockholm Metropolitan study 1953–1985, consists of all children born in 1953 and living in the Stockholm metropolitan area in 1963. The second, The Swedish Work and Mortality Database 1980–2009 (WMD), consists of all individuals living in Sweden in 1980 or 1990, and born before 1985. The initiative to create the database was taken by Denny Vågerö at the Centre for Health Equity Studies, CHESS, of Stockholm University/Karolinska Institute and Sten-Åke Stenberg at the Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University (SOFI). The resulting database provides a 50-year long follow-up of the original 1953 birth cohort.

The Kungsholmen Project is a longitudinal population-based study on ageing and dementia, carried out by the Stockholm Gerontology Research Center in collaboration with Aging Research Center (ARC), Karolinska Institutet.

The project, which started in 1987, has gathered a 12-year long database and offers information on aging from a multidisciplinary perspective. All persons that were born before 1913 and lived in the Kungsholmen district of Stockholm, were invited to participate (a total of 2368 persons on October 1st, 1987, including both community-dwelling and institutionalized persons). Later, the research additionally included all 90+ old subjects living in the St. Göran parish, an adjacent geographical area. The baseline phase and four follow-ups have been completed, with the last phase concluding in the summer of 2000. Time 1 was the only measurement occasion when a two-phase study design was adopted, with an extensive clinical examination performed after a screening phase. At every other occasion, all participants were interviewed by nurses, clinically examined by physicians, and assessed by psychologists.

The Uppsala Birth Cohort Multigeneration Study (UBCoS) started in 2005 when we were first able to combine existing data on a representative and well-defined cohort of 14,192 males and females born in Uppsala from 1915-1929 (the Uppsala Birth Cohort: UBCoS) with information on descendants of the original cohort members obtained from routine registers.

In 2007-2011, the study was further developed by additional data collection in school archives and records from Census 1930 and the period of follow-up was extended till end of year 2009.

The study is unique in investigating intergenerational effects as “forward in time” processes, starting at the beginning of the last century (i.e. well before any of the routine registers were in place). Intergenerational associations can be currently investigated in more than 140,000 study subjects from families spanning up to five generations, including the 14,192 original cohort members, their 22,559 children, 38,771 grandchildren and 25,471 great grandchildren born up to 2009.

The Prospective Epidemiological Risk Factor (PERF) Study is an ambidirectional population-based study of postmenopausal women set up with the purpose of obtaining a better understanding of the aetiology and pathogenesis of age-related diseases. Participants were recruited from a source population of 8875 women residing in Denmark. The baseline examination (PERF I) comprised 5855 women with mean age of 70.8 years (49.7-88.8) and took place between 1999 and 2001. All subjects have been followed up with registry linkage using population-based national registries. Further, a subcohort was re-invited to attend a follow-up visit between 2013 and 2014 (PERF II). Registry data are available for all baseline participants. From the baseline population, 2103 were enrolled in PERF II.

The Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) is a large-scale linkage study created using data from administrative and statistical sources. These include: census data from 1991 onwards; vital events data (births, deaths, marriages); NHS Central Register data (gives information on migration into or out of Scotland); and education data (including Schools Census and SQA data).

The Maastricht Study is an extensive phenotyping study that focuses on the etiology of type 2 diabetes, its classic complications (cardiovascular disease, nephropathy, neuropathy and retinopathy), and its emerging comorbidities, including cognitive decline, depression, and gastrointestinal, respiratory and musculoskeletal diseases. The study uses advanced state-of-the-art imaging techniques and extensive biobanking to determine health status in a population-based cohort of 10,000 individuals that is enriched with type 2 diabetes participants. The Maastricht Study is expected to become one of the most extensive phenotyping studies in both the general population and type 2 diabetes participants worldwide.

The Maastricht Study allows researchers access to data to encourage publications of high quality papers and presentations. External researchers (those without an MUMC or UM affiliation) can only submit a research proposal in cooperation with a member of the Maastricht Study Management Team and/or Maastricht Study Participating researchers.

The Moli-sani study (www.moli-sani.org) is a cohort study aiming at evaluating the risk factors (environmental, genetics, bio-molecular) linked to chronic-degenerative disease with particular regard to cancer, cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative disease.
The study has recruited, between March 2005 and April 2010, 24,325 people aged ³ 35 living in the Molise region, from city hall registries by a multistage sampling. Exclusion criteria were pregnancy at the time of recruitment, disturbances in understanding or willingness, current poly-traumas or coma, or refusal to sign the informed consent. Participation rate was 70%.
All subjects underwent electrocardiogram and spirometric tests aimed to evaluate pulmonary diffusion capacity, gas diffusion and pulmonary volumes through plethysmography.
The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition FFQ was used to determine daily nutritional intakes consumed in the past year.
A follow-up based on linkage with hospital discharge records (SDO) and mortality regional registry was performed at December 2011 with a median of 4.3 years and at December 2014 with a median of 9.6 years. Outcomes analysed at follow-up are: mortality for any and specific causes, hospitalization and hospital stay, coronary artery disease, stroke, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, diabetes, cancer.