Centre for Public Health, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK
Centre for Public Health, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, UK.
BMJ Open. 2024 Jan 31;14(1):e075672. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2023-075672.
The Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longitudinal Study of Ageing (NICOLA) study is the largest study of ageing in Northern Ireland (NI). The Harmonised Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) is a substudy of NICOLA designed to assess cognitive impairment and dementia in individuals aged 65 and over. The NICOLA-HCAP substudy is funded by the National Institute on Aging as part of a network for enhancing cross-national research within a worldwide group of population-based, longitudinal studies of ageing, all of which are centred around the US-based Health and Retirement Study.
The NICOLA-HCAP study will draw on the main NICOLA cohort (of 8283 participants) and randomly sample 1000 participants aged 65 and over to take part in the substudy. Participants will complete a series of cognitive tests (n=19) via a computer-assisted personal interview administered in their home (or alternatively within the research centre) and will be asked to nominate a family member or friend to complete an additional interview of validated instruments to provide information on respondent's prior and current cognitive and physical functioning and whether the individual requires help with daily activities. The objectives of the study are: to investigate the prevalence of dementia and cognitive impairment in NICOLA; harmonise scoring of the NICOLA-HCAP data to the HCAP studies conducted in Ireland, the USA and England; to explore the validity of dementia estimates; and investigate the risk factors for dementia and cognitive impairment.
The study received ethical approval from the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences Research Ethics Committee, Queen's University Belfast. We will provide data from the Northern Irish HCAP to the research community via data repositories such as the Dementias Platform UK and Gateway to Global Aging to complement existing public data resources and support epidemiological research by others. Findings will also be disseminated through peer-reviewed publications and at international conferences.
北爱尔兰老龄化纵向研究（NICOLA）是北爱尔兰（NI）最大的老龄化研究。协调认知评估方案（HCAP）是 NICOLA 的一个子研究，旨在评估 65 岁及以上人群的认知障碍和痴呆症。NICOLA-HCAP 子研究由美国国家老龄化研究所资助，作为增强全球范围内以人口为基础的老龄化纵向研究网络内跨国研究的一部分，这些研究都以美国为基础的健康与退休研究为中心。
NICOLA-HCAP 研究将利用主要的 NICOLA 队列（8283 名参与者），并随机抽取 1000 名 65 岁及以上的参与者参加子研究。参与者将通过计算机辅助个人访谈在家中（或在研究中心）完成一系列认知测试（n=19），并被要求提名一名家庭成员或朋友完成额外的验证工具访谈，以提供有关受访者先前和当前认知和身体功能的信息，以及个人是否需要日常活动帮助。研究的目的是：调查 NICOLA 中痴呆症和认知障碍的患病率；协调 NICOLA-HCAP 数据的评分与在爱尔兰、美国和英格兰进行的 HCAP 研究；探索痴呆症估计的有效性；并调查痴呆症和认知障碍的风险因素。
该研究获得了贝尔法斯特女王大学医学、健康和生命科学研究伦理委员会的伦理批准。我们将通过数据存储库（如英国痴呆症平台和全球老龄化网关）向研究界提供北爱尔兰 HCAP 的数据，以补充现有的公共数据资源，并支持其他人的流行病学研究。研究结果还将通过同行评议的出版物和国际会议传播。
