The Clinical Core serves as the central source of research subjects for the ADCC. Its primary function is to provide research projects and pilot studies associated with the ADCC with well-diagnosed and clinically evaluated elderly subjects and with related clinical material (blood, CSF, etc.) The Clinical Core includes a Satellite Diagnostic and Treatment Center (SDTC) at Bellevue Hospital which focuses on minority recruitment. The Core population currently indicates more than 2,250 cases, consisting of patients with AD and mild cognitive impairment as well as normal elderly subjects. About 150 new subjects are added to the core each year. The population is reassessed longitudinally and tracked to autopsy for postmortem evaluation. All clinical data are included in a central database maintained by the Data Management and Statistical Analysis Core. During the nine years since the inception of the ADCC, the Clinical Core has been extremely successful in achieving its specific aims. The Core has evaluated about 1,329 new patients and completed 1,377 longitudinal follow-up evaluations (during the current funding period 531 new patients and 690 follow-up evaluations). The great majority of Core subjects are recruited into various clinical protocols, including about 500 who have participated in clinical pharmacologic trials directed towards remediation of cognitive or behavioral symptoms. The Core helps support a Clinical Trials Unit which participates in the NIA-Alzheimers Disease Cooperative Study (a multi-site clinical trials consortium) and many other multi-site trials. The Core also maintains a CSF Bank and a Serum-DNA Bank to help support laboratory studies of potential biochemical and genetic markers. The Clinical Core has close interactions with the Data Management, Neuroimaging, Caregiver and Neuropathology Cores. The Clinical Core has effectively served and has improved the cost- effectiveness of numerous clinical studies, and has enabled studies to be done which would not have been possible without this centralized clinical resource.
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