Snowdon David A
Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, 320 Health Sciences Building, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536-0200, USA.
Ann Intern Med. 2003 Sep 2;139(5 Pt 2):450-4. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-139-5_part_2-200309021-00014.
The Nun Study is a longitudinal study of 678 Catholic sisters 75 to 107 years of age who are members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame congregation. Data collected for this study include early and middle-life risk factors from the convent archives, annual cognitive and physical function evaluations during old age, and postmortem neuropathologic evaluations of the participants' brains. The case histories presented include a centenarian who was a model of healthy aging, a 92-year-old with dementia and clinically significant Alzheimer disease neuropathology and vascular lesions, a cognitively and physically intact centenarian with almost no neuropathology, and an 85-year-old with well-preserved cognitive and physical function despite a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer disease and an abundance of Alzheimer disease lesions. These case histories provide examples of how healthy aging and dementia relate to the degree of pathology present in the brain and the level of resistance to the clinical expression of the neuropathology.
修女研究是一项针对678名年龄在75至107岁之间、属于圣母学校修女会的天主教修女的纵向研究。本研究收集的数据包括来自修道院档案的早年和中年风险因素、老年期间的年度认知和身体功能评估，以及参与者大脑的死后神经病理学评估。所呈现的病例史包括一位健康老龄化典范的百岁老人、一位患有痴呆症且具有临床显著意义的阿尔茨海默病神经病理学和血管病变的92岁老人、一位认知和身体完好且几乎没有神经病理学的百岁老人，以及一位尽管有阿尔茨海默病遗传易感性和大量阿尔茨海默病病变但认知和身体功能保存良好的85岁老人。这些病例史提供了健康老龄化和痴呆症如何与大脑中存在的病理学程度以及对神经病理学临床表达的抵抗水平相关的实例。
