CORE-- CLINICAL

University Of California Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

The Clinical Core will develop the current strengths of the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Center (UCD ADC) in order to create a synergy between the research at UCD and the activities of the Clinical Core. This process will further the goals of supporting the AD research at UCD and of promoting thematic research on the roles of cerebrovascular disease and ethnicity in modifying the clinical expression of AD. While the Clinical Core proposes to continue to recruit; evaluate and longitudinally follow Alzheimer's disease patients in the usual manner, we also propose to develop new cohorts and to apply new methods developed during the previous funding cycle. The new cohorts will include larger numbers of African American and Hispanic subjects, as well as patients with cerebrovascular risk factors or disease. Additional emphasis will be placed on subjects with very mild cognitive symptoms who are cognitively impaired but not demented (CIND). In order to maximize resources, the Core will establish two separate groups, the Subject Pool and the Longitudinal Cohort. The Subject Pool will constitute a large group of clinically probably AD patients, who are evaluated once. It is designed to meet the specific needs of collaborating researchers who are mostly interested in cross-sectional studies of AD. The Longitudinal Cohort will constitute an ethnically diverse group of subjects with annual follow-up to autopsy, including controls, patients who have CIND, and clinically probable AD and possible AD patients with cerebrovascular disease. New recruitment strategies are proposed to obtain these measurement of cognitive deficit, will be used. The Clinical Core will work closely with the Neuroimaging Core to obtain quantitated MRI data, with the Biostatistics and Data Management Core to expand the data base and to refine statistical methodology, with the Neuropathology Core to obtain autopsies on Longitudinal Cohort members, and with the Education and Information Transfer Core to maximize our recruitment of ethnic minority subjects.