# Healthy Aging and Senile Dementia

> **NIH NIH P01** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $3,536,589

## Abstract

Overall Project Summary
The over-arching goal of the Healthy Aging and Senile Dementia (HASD) study is to determine the factors that
signal the imminent development of symptomatic Alzheimer disease (AD) in cognitively normal older adults. In
pursuing this goal, HASD also will examine whether these predictive factors differ between African Americans
and non-Hispanic whites, are influenced by sleep, or might be offset by genetic variants that protect against
developing symptomatic AD. Finally, HASD will evaluate a novel method of assessing cognitive performance
in naturalistic settings via a smartphone application.
To accomplish these goals, HASD will assess and follow a richly phenotyped cohort that includes both
cognitively normal older adults (~75%) and those with early-stage symptomatic AD (~25%). The longitudinal
assessment protocol includes standard and novel clinical and cognitive measures, a six-day in-home sleep
study, magnetic structural imaging studies of the brain, positron emission tomography studies of the brain to
reveal the cerebral hallmarks of AD, amyloid-beta plaques and tau deposition, and examination of blood for
genetic studies and of cerebrospinal fluid for levels of amyloid-beta and tau. Five Cores (Administration,
Clinical, Biostatistics, Neuropathology [includes the Biofluids Laboratory], and Imaging) will support four
Projects that carry out the scientific aims of HASD:
Project 1: “Characterization of Molecular Biomarker Profiles of AD throughout its Pathobiological Continuum”
Project 2: “Sleep and Orexin: Potential Markers of Progression from Preclinical to Mildly Symptomatic
Alzheimer Disease”
Project 3: “Dissecting the Genetic Architecture of Resilience”
Project 4: “Smartphone-Based `Burst' Cognitive Assessments”

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9914167
- **Project number:** 5P01AG003991-37
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** JOHN MORRIS
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $3,536,589
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 1997-01-01 → 2024-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9914167

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9914167, Healthy Aging and Senile Dementia (5P01AG003991-37). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9914167. Licensed CC0.

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