National Institute on Aging (NIA) was later established on 1974 under which BLSA continued to seek answer to the question "What is aging?". Over the years BLSA expanded and went through changes:
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Overhauled in 2003-2004 by Dr. Luigi Ferrucci with a new paradigm to identify multifactorial sources of aging processes, including frailty, loss of mobility and cognitive impairment.
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Expanded in 2008 and 2011 to study “IDEAL” which is the targeted enrollment of healthy elders above 80 to promote research on healthy aging.
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A Neuroimaging component was established by Dr. Susan Resnick in 2016.
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A subset of the BLSA participants enrolled in the Autopsy program since the start of the program. Brain autopsies are conducted by Dr. Juan Trocnoso in Neuropathology at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
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Our Role in BLSA Project
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Brain Signatures lab conducts the cognitive assessments for the autopsy cohort at Johns Hopkins, coordinates autopsies and clinicopathological conferences, and measures the AD-related biomarkers in longitudinal samples from the BLSA project.
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