The Women's Healthy Ageing Project: Fertile ground for investigation of healthy participants 'at risk' for dementia

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease neuropathology (amyloid, tauopathies) and brain atrophy are present decades prior to manifestation of clinical symptoms. With the failure of treatment trials it is becoming clearer that the window for prevention and therapeutic intervention is before significant neuronal loss and clinical deterioration of cognition has occurred. Early identification of those at risk of disease and optimizing their management to prevent disease in later life are crucial to delaying disease onset and improving people's quality of life. The Women's Healthy Aging Project (WHAP) is a longitudinal study of over 400 Australian-born women, epidemiologically randomly sampled in 1990. The WHAP aims..