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The West of Scotland Twenty-07 Study: ‘Health in the community’ was set up in 1986 in order to investigate the reasons for differences in health by socio-economic circumstances, gender, the place where people live, age, ethnic group and family type.

The basic design of the Study involved recruiting three cohorts (groups) of volunteers, each group born twenty years apart. Members of the oldest cohort were born around 1932, those in the middle cohort were born in 1952, and those in the youngest cohort were born in 1972. A total of 4,510 people agreed to take part, and have been followed for 20 years. The final wave of data collection was completed in 2008. This means that when the Study began (1987/8) participants were 15, 35 or 55 years old, and by the end of the Study (2007/8), participants were 35, 55 and 75 years old.
The data collected are extensive and include self-reported mental and physical health (including chronic conditions, medications, disabilities); physical measures; biomarkers; cognition; life circumstances (including employment, housing, family); health behaviours; beliefs, attitudes and values. The cohort is being followed up for mortality using linkage to national records. Any data on neurodegenerative disease are from self-reported health and / or death certificates.
A full description of the cohort profile is available in the following publication: Cohort Profile: West of Scotland 20-07 study: health in the community. International Journal of Epidemiology 2009;38:1215-23

ULSAM is a unique, ongoing, longitudinal, epidemiologic study based on all available men, born between 1920 and 1924, in Uppsala County, Sweden. The men were investigated at the ages of 50, 60, 70, 77, 82 88 and 93 years. The reinvestigations in ULSAM were based on the previous investigations. Full screening and official registry data is available in our databases and more data is continuously added.

Health examination at 93 years of age was carried out between December 2013 and March 2015. To this examination 245 men have been invited. Totally 147 men (60%) participated in the investigation. Of these, 23 men were examined at the hospital and 102 were visited at home by a nurse. In addition, 22 men completed only a questionnaire. To this examination even spouses were invited. In the complete examination 43 spouses have participated and 11 completed only a questionnaire.

The VLS is a long-term, large-scale, and multi-faceted longitudinal investigation of human aging. Incorporating biomedical approaches, leading-edge technologies, and epidemiological perspectives, the VLS evaluates and tracks actual cognitive, health, functional and lifestyle trajectories leading to outcomes that can be classified as normal, resilient, exceptional, impaired, or dementia. Our studies examine these differential brain and cognitive changes as a function of interactions among multiple biomarkers of both risk and protection. Among these dynamically interacting biomarkers are those representing selected aspects of biological, health, genetic, metabolic, vascular, lifestyle, physical fitness, cognitive activity, sex/gender, and demographic domains

The Concord Health and Ageing in Men Project (CHAMP) is one of the worlds largest and most comprehensive study of the health of older men ever conducted anywhere in the world. CHAMP involves 1705 men aged 70 years and older recruited from the community living near Concord Hospital in Sydneys inner west. Subjects were recruited during 2005 and 2006 and subjects were re-assessed after two, five and nine years. A 14 year follow-up assessment (wave 5) is planned for 2019. Clinical dementia assessment was done at baseline but not in waves 2, 3, and 4. Clinical dementia assessment will be included in wave 5.

The study is particularly concerned with cognitive impairment and dementia; falls, fractures and osteoporosis; and urinary problems.

The MemoVie cohort study aims to investigate the living conditions or risk factors under which the normal cognitive capacities of the senior population in Luxembourg (? 65?year-old) evolve (1) to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) ? transitory non-clinical stage ? and (2) to AD. Identifying MCI and AD predictors undeniably constitutes a challenge in public health in that it would allow interventions which could protect or delay the occurrence of cognitive disorders in elderly people. In addition, the MemoVie study sets out to generate hitherto unavailable data, and a comprehensive view of the elderly population in the country.

A 1-year follow-up was included in the original design of the study. The enrolled participants have been followed-up.

The Andhra Pradesh Children and Parent Study (APCAPS) is a large prospective, intergenerational cohort study in Southern India that began with the long-term follow-up of the Hyderabad Nutrition Trial (1987-1990). It is situated in 29 villages near the city of Hyderabad in Ranga Reddy district, Andhra Pradesh.

The Hyderabad Nutrition Trial evaluated the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, a national community outreach program, which provides a daily food supplement to pregnant women and children under 6 years of age. The trial used a controlled stepped wedge design, recruiting pregnant women from 29 villages (15 intervention with program; 14 controls awaiting implementation) and followed them through to childbirth.

In 2003-5, trial households were retraced and surveyed: families with at least one child born during the trial period and still alive in 2003-05 became the APCAPS prospective cohort (1815 families, 2601 index children). At this time, a first wave (W1) of data collection was carried out on index children and their mothers. The index children were then re-examined as young adults (aged 18-23 years) in 2009-10 (the second wave, W2) and then again in 2010-12 (the third wave, W3) when their siblings and parents were also examined. A socio-demographic household survey of all residents in all 29 villages was completed between 2012 and 2014.

A family-based cohort study that is embedded in the Genetic Research in Isolated Populations (GRIP) program in the South West of the Netherlands. The aim of this program was to identify genetic risk factors in the development of complex disorders. For the ERF study, 22 families that had at least five children baptized in the community church between 1850-1900 were identified with the help of genealogical records. All living descendants of these couples and their spouses were invited to take part in the study. Data collection started in June 2002 and was finished in February 2005 (n=2065).

The Longitudinal Study of Generations (LSOG), initiated in 1971, began as a survey of intergenerational relations among 300 three-generation California families with grandparents (then in their sixties), middle-aged parents (then in their early forties), and grandchildren (then aged 15 to 26). The study broadened in 1991 and now includes a fourth generation, the great-grandchildren of these same families.

The study objectives were:

To track life-course trajectories of family intergenerational solidarity and conflict over three decades of adulthood, and across successive generations of family members;
To identify how intergenerational solidarity and conflict influence the well-being of family members throughout the adult life-course and across successive generations;
To chart the effects of socio-historical change on families, intergenerational relationships, and individual life-course development during the past three decades;
To examine women’s roles and relationships in multigenerational families over 30 years of rapid change in the social trajectories of women’s lives.

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 original study (1969-73) had five main objectives: (i) to study the relationship of birth weight (BW) and gestational age (GA) to infant mortality and the incidence of congenital defects; (ii) to study maternal blood pressure before and during pregnancy and the incidence of toxaemia; (iii) to assess the effects of parental consanguinity on reproductive outcomes; (iv) to examine the impact of family planning programmes on fertility and (v) to estimate rates of foetal loss, and neonatal, infant and early childhood mortality.1 The subsequent follow-up studies focused on the effects of prenatal factors BW and GA on physical growth and development and mortality during childhood and adolescence.

For the follow-up in young adulthood (1998-2002), the main objective was to study glucose tolerance, insulin resistance and insulin secretion and a range of cardiovascular risk factors (body composition, blood pressure and plasma lipid concentrations) in relation to parental size, neonatal size and childhood growth.