The Clinical Core will provide prospective longitudinal data on a large sample of patients with probable and possible dementia of the Alzheimer's type (AD). Ongoing research and clinical programs in the Section of Geriatric Psychiatry/Foerderer Geriatric Evaluation Program at the Ralston Penn Center and the Cognitive Neurology Section at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) and in the Memory Disorders Service at Graduate Hospital (GH) have already accrued descriptive data on a large sample of AD patients and their families. This core will integrate clinical and research data at these three rapidly growing sites in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center (UPMC) through standardization of assessment, pooling of resources and centralization of data management. The core will provide standardized state-of-the-art clinical assessment and care for cognitively impaired patients and their families as well as educational programs for health care workers and interested members of the community. Additionally, core activities will develop access to a substantial base on well characterized AD patients with longitudinal assessment data for investigators at the University of Pennsylvania and at other institutions in the Delaware Valley and for ongoing nationwide collaborative studies. In an effort to provide useful information in a form that is consistent with established Alzheimer's Disease Research Centers and Core Centers, entry and biannual comprehensive neurological and behavioral assessments of patients with suspected cognitive impairment will be based on the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) clinical, psychometric, behavioral, neuroimaging and pathological protocols. Additionally, more detailed evaluations of behavior and function, consistent with the established research protocols of the core leaders, will be included. The three sites in the Clinical Core already collaborate with Dr. John Trojanowski to ascertain and accrue subjects with possible and probable AD for postmortem studies in related research grants such as the Program Project (PP) on AD and Parkinson's Disease (PD) that is associated with this proposed ADCC. Efficient integration of clinical assessment and the postmortem evaluation in the Neuropathology Core will be facilitated by the standardized prospective longitudinal followup and data management activities of the Clinical Core. Additionally, the Core will provide database management and biostatistical resources for the ADCC and for new and related research projects on AD.
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