Centre for Public Health, School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, Institute of Clinical Science, Queen's University Belfast, Grosvenor Road, BT12 6BJ, Belfast, United Kingdom.
BMC Public Health. 2023 Mar 10;23(1):466. doi: 10.1186/s12889-023-15355-x.
The Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longitudinal Study of Ageing (NICOLA) is a prospective, longitudinal study of a representative cohort of older adults living in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. Its aim is to explore the social, behavioural, economic and biological factors of ageing and how these factors change as people age. The study has been designed to maximize comparability with other international studies of ageing thereby facilitating cross-country comparisons. This paper provides an overview of the design and methodology of the health assessment which was carried out as part of Wave 1.
Three thousand, six hundred and fifty five community dwelling adults, aged 50 years and over participated in the health assessment as part of Wave 1 of NICOLA. The health assessment included a battery of measurements across various domains that addressed key indicators of ageing namely: physical function, vision and hearing, cognitive function, and cardiovascular health. This manuscript describes the scientific rationale for the choice of assessments, provides an overview of the core objective measures carried out in the health assessment and describes the differences in characteristics of participants who took part in the health assessment compared to those who did not take part.
The manuscript highlights the importance of incorporating objective measures of health in population based studies as a means of complementing subjective measures and as a way to advance our understanding of the ageing process. The findings contextualize NICOLA as a data resource within Dementias Platform UK (DPUK), the Gateway to Global Ageing (G2G) and other existing networks of population based longitudinal studies of ageing.
This manuscript can help inform design considerations for other population based studies of ageing and facilitate cross-country comparative analysis of key life-course factors affecting healthy ageing such as educational attainment, diet, the accumulation of chronic conditions (including Alzheimer's disease, dementia and cardiovascular disease) as well as welfare and retirement policies.
北爱尔兰老龄化纵向研究（NICOLA）是一项针对英国北爱尔兰居住的老年人群体的代表性前瞻性纵向研究。其目的是探索衰老的社会、行为、经济和生物学因素，以及这些因素如何随着人们年龄的增长而变化。该研究旨在最大限度地提高与其他国际衰老研究的可比性，从而促进跨国比较。本文概述了作为第一波研究的一部分进行的健康评估的设计和方法。
3655 名 50 岁及以上的社区居住成年人参加了作为 NICOLA 第一波研究的一部分的健康评估。健康评估包括一系列跨多个领域的测量，涉及衰老的关键指标，包括：身体功能、视力和听力、认知功能和心血管健康。本文档描述了选择评估的科学依据，概述了健康评估中进行的核心客观测量，并描述了参加健康评估的参与者与未参加健康评估的参与者的特征差异。
本文强调了在基于人群的研究中纳入健康的客观测量的重要性，作为补充主观测量的一种手段，并作为深入了解衰老过程的一种方式。研究结果将 NICOLA 作为英国痴呆症平台（DPUK）、全球老龄化门户（G2G）和其他现有的基于人群的衰老纵向研究网络内的一个数据资源进行了定位。
本文可以为其他基于人群的衰老研究提供设计考虑因素，并促进对影响健康衰老的关键生命历程因素（包括阿尔茨海默病、痴呆和心血管疾病在内的慢性疾病的积累）、教育程度、饮食、福利和退休政策等进行跨国比较分析。
