Longitudinal Brain Aging Study Progress

Over the past year, we have conducted 193 in-person evaluations! This brings our total enrollment over the course of the project to a stunning 760, with some participants having over 10 years of data! DNA, RNA, serum, and plasma are collected at each visit, and we have facilitated 79 lumbar punctures for cerebrospinal fluid collection. We have sent serum to UCSF clinical labs to learn more about vascular and metabolic risk factors and, this year, sent a subset of CSF samples to collaborators to learn more about the biological markers of aging. This year, we have also obtained 37 amyloid PET scans (bringing our grand total to 150) and have now successfully obtained 12 tau PET scans. With these bioinformatics under our belt, we hope to expose more about what amyloid and tau protein aggregation mean in the context of healthy aging, and what may be unique about persons with high protein levels but no signs of cognitive decline.