The Clinical and Research Support Core will be the focal point of much of the activity in the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC). This Core will be responsible for the recruitment and characterization of cognitively impaired subjects and normal control individuals in both Rochester, MN and Jacksonville, FL. In Rochester, patients will be derived from community and regional resources and control subjects will be recruited from the community. In Jacksonville, African American and indigent cognitively impaired subjects and a normal control cohort of American-American subjects will be established as well. Most of the these activities will be a continuation of current practices in the Mayo Alzheimer's Disease Center. The cognitively impaired and normal control subjects at both sites will be evaluated in an identical fashion and all of the data will be entered into a common database. The subjects will be screened for a variety of research projects including epidemiology, natural history, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, investigational drug trials, predictor studies, neuropathology and genetic studies. The individuals recruited will be used to address the scientific themes of the ADRC: neuroepidemiology of aging and dementia, boundary between normal aging and very early cognitive impairment, and predictors of cognitive deterioration. A mechanism is in place for longitudinal follow-up of all of these subjects. The Clinical and Research Support Core will also continue the development and maintenance of a centralized database. The database has been created for clinical, neuropsychological, neuroimaging and neuropathology data from Rochester and Jacksonville and this database will be expanded. Quality control measures are in place for the maintenance for the database and programming capabilities are available for modifications. The Core will also serve the ADRC consultation expertise in epidemiology and biostatistics.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 1014 publications
