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The main objective of the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) is to provide comprehensive longitudinal evidence base on health, social and economic wellbeing of elderly population in India.

LASI main wave’s covers 30 states and 6 union territories of India covering a panel sample size of 60,250 elderly persons aged 45 years and above. The long-term goal of LASI is to continue this survey for the next 25 years with the first wave planned in the year 2016-17 and second wave in 2018-19. LASI aims to obtain all the indicators for each of the 30 states and 6 union territories. In addition, LASI aims at obtaining indicators for each of the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai.

Last update – 10/02/2017

The DEAS is a nationwide representative survey of the German population aged 40 and older that combines cross-sectional and longitudinal samples. Participants from baseline samples (drawn every six years) are followed up and enter the different panel samples. Panel data was collected at the same time as baseline samples until 2008. Starting from 2011, panel samples are interviewed every three years. Thus, DEAS enables an analysis of social change using the cross-sectional data of 1996, 2002, 2008, and 2014, as well as an investigation of intra-individual development over three to eighteen years (1996-2002-2008-2011-2014).

Last update – 16/02/2017

The overall goal was to establish a genetic-epidemiological database to shed light on the aging process among the extremely old, focusing on physical and cognitive functioning. In the first wave 2,262 Danes born in 1905 participated in a home-based 2-hour multidimensional interview, including cognitive and physical performance tests and collection of DNA, carried out by lay interviewers. Population-based registers were used to evaluate representativeness.

The first wave took place in 1998 and participants were followed-up in 2000 and 2003. In 2005 all the surviving birth cohort members were invited to participate irrespective of previous participation:

Wave 1: 2262 participants (1653 with biological sample)
Wave 2: 1086 participants
Wave 3: 437 participants
Wave 4: 256 participants

Last update – 30/01/2017

CFAS Wales aims to interview a representative sample of 3,750 people aged 65 and over in two areas in Wales (Gwynedd and Swansea). Using established and standardised techniques it will collect data that will enable the investigation of cognitive impairment, depression, physical disability and healthy active life expectancy for the whole group and within social groups. It will provide a foundation for other collaborative studies that investigate biomarkers and other early indications of risk of cognitive decline, such as imaging. It will investigate factors that may delay the onset of dementia, specifically focussing on the role of bilingualism and social networks. As the participants reside in a bilingual area this is a key opportunity.

Last update – 13/02/2017

The PATH Through Life project is a 20 year longitudinal cohort study of 7,485 young (aged 20-24 at baseline), midlife (aged 40-44 at baseline) and older (aged 60-64 at baseline) adults randomly sampled from the electoral roll of the Australian Capital Territory and the nearby city of Queanbeyan.
The original aims of the project are outlined below.

To delineate the course of depression, anxiety, substance use and cognitive ability with increasing age across the adult life span.
To identify environmental risk, genetic risk and protective factors influencing individual differences in the course of these characteristics.
To investigate interrelationships over time between the three domains of: depression and anxiety, substance use, and cognitive ability and dementia.
Data collection has occurred at four intervals (4 waves), at approximately four year intervals with a good participant retention rate. The fifth wave of data collection is commencing in 2017.
Several design features of the PATH project contribute to its unique standing among population based longitudinal cohort studies.
Obtaining measures of genetic, biological (including MRI), psychosocial and lifestyle risk and protective factors for mental health and wellbeing.
Use of a narrow age cohort design with longitudinal follow ups as an optimal means of separating age and cohort effects.
Assessment of participants across the full adult lifespan, permitting investigation of developmentally significant, but under studied periods such as midlife
Recruitment and follow up of a young-old population, providing important pre-clinical data for studying the development of age related changes in memory and cognition.

Last update – 12/01/2017

The Thai Cohort Study was established in 2005 in order to study the dynamics, drivers and impacts of the population transition from high maternal and child mortality and infectious disease to low mortality and chronic disease. We call this the ‘health-risk transition’ – synchronised change in causal risks and health outcomes affecting whole populations, with Thailand being a good example in the SE Asia region. This transition can be divided into overlapping or interacting component transitions such as the nutrition transition, the health system transition, sexual transition, the transport transition, the (formal) work transition and the environment transition (including urbanisation). As our understanding improves we are better able to inform governments about changing health service demands and changing prevention needs — with universal
health insurance and Thai obesity research being two prominent examples of national response.

Cohort members are distance-learning students who resided nationwide and were enrolled at the Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University when they responded to a 20-page baseline questionnaire in 2005 (n= 87,151). A four and eight year follow-up were conducted with a response rate of approximately 70% at each follow-up (n=60,569 in 2009 and n=42,785 in 2013). At 2005 baseline, median age was 29 years, roughly half the sample were females, and approximately half were urban residents.

For mortality data linkage, all cohort members have provided their Citizen ID number which was matched with death records from the Thai Ministry of Interior and subsequently linked with causes of death from the Ministry of Public Health. Up until November 2016, there were a total of 1,401 deaths among the Thai Cohort Study participants.

Last update: 22/01/2017

Based at the University of Bristol, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), also known as Children of the 90s, is a world-leading birth cohort study. Between April 1991 and December 1992 more than 14,000 pregnant women were recruited into the study and these women (some of whom had two pregnancies or multiple births during the recruitment period), the children arising from the pregnancy, and their partners have been followed up over two decades.

The cohort has been followed intensively with annual questionnaires for the mothers, fathers and the children from age 5. A 10% sample of children were seen 10 times between 4 and 61 months for clinic assessment. Annual clinic assessment of the whole cohort was conducted from the age of 7 to 13 and 15 to 17. Assessment at age 24/25 is currently planned.

Record linkage has been completed for Education, Hospital Episode Statistics, Clinical Practice Research Datalink and Death notification and cancer cases.

1 million biological samples are held including maternal blood and urine, umbilical cord blood, placentas, paternal blood and saliva and childrens blood, saliva and urine.

The study has been extended to include grandparents, siblings, and children of the children and recruitment is underway.

ALSPAC is part of CLOSER (Cohort & Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources) which aims to maximise the use, value and impact of the UK’s longitudinal studies.

Last update: 12/01/2017

The NSHD has informed UK health care, education and social policy for more than 70 years and is the oldest and longest running of the British birth cohort studies. Today, with study members in their seventies, the NSHD offers a unique opportunity to explore the long-term biological and social processes of ageing and how ageing is affected by factors acting across the whole of life. From an initial maternity survey of 13,687 of all births recorded in England, Scotland and Wales during one week of March, 1946, a socially stratified sample of 5,362 singleton babies born to married parents was selected for follow-up. This sample comprises the NSHD cohort and participants have been studied 24 times throughout their life.

During their childhood, the main aim of the NSHD was to investigate how the environment at home and at school affected physical and mental development and educational attainment. During adulthood, the main aim was to investigate how childhood health and development and lifetime social circumstances affected their adult health and function and how these change with age.

Now, as participants reach retirement, the research team is developing the NSHD into a life course study of ageing. Study members completed a postal questionnaire in 2014 and participated in a home visit in 2015/16, where data on health, lifestyle and life circumstances as well as obtaining repeat physical and cognitive measurements were collected. Over the past two years, a subset of 500 study members were invited to participate in a neuroimaging sub-study and over the next two years they will be recalled for a follow-up. This study will be conducted in collaboration with the Institute of Neurology, UCL.

NSHD is part of CLOSER (Cohort & Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources) which aims to maximise the use, value and impact of the UK’s longitudinal studies.
NSHD is part of the Dementias Platform UK (DPUK), a multi-million pound public-private partnership to accelerate progress in dementias research http://www.mrc.ac.uk/research/facilities/dementias-platform-uk

Last update: 19/12/2016

The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is a multi-disciplinary research project following the lives of around 19,000 children born in the UK in 2000-01. It is the most recent of Britain’s world-renowned national longitudinal birth cohort studies. The study has been tracking the Millennium children through their early childhood years and plans to follow them into adulthood. It collects information on the childrens siblings and parents. MCS’s field of enquiry covers such diverse topics as parenting; childcare; school choice; child behaviour and cognitive development; child and parental health; parents employment and education; income and poverty; housing, neighbourhood and residential mobility; and social capital and ethnicity.

The children and families have been contacted 6 times since recruitment at ages nine months, 3, 5, 7, 11 & 14 years.

MCS is part of CLOSER (Cohort & Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources) which aims to maximise the use, value and impact of the UK’s longitudinal studies.

Last update: 16/01/2017

The OPDC Discovery cohort is a prospective, longitudinal study that has recruited patients with early idiopathic Parkinson Disease, healthy controls and participants at risk of PD. The study also includes participants with REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder. Over 1500 subjects have been recruited to the cohort, including 1087 people with Parkinson’s, 300 healthy controls, 111 First degree PD relatives and 151 PSG-diagnosed REM sleep behaviour disorder, thought to be ‘at-risk’ of developing future Parkinson’s. All patients have a clinical assessment repeated every eighteen months so we can better understand the progression of Parkinson’s over time. Over 500 patients have been seen for a second visit which has allowed us to identify some important differences in the way Parkinson’s progresses in different people.

Last update: 29/12/2016