Building Brain Health for Life

About the study

The L.I.F.E. Brain Health Study, is a longitudinal research study that will enroll community-dwelling young adults ages 18-34, who are residents of Ohio, northern/eastern Kentucky, and the western part of West Virginia. Using a purposive sampling strategy, we intend to enroll 40% or more of the total sample from rural and inner-city communities and our projected sample size is 10,000 to be recruited over 2.5 years. Enrollment of this sample is feasible as the SOAR study completed enrollment of 12,000 participants (12-65 years) in just the state of Ohio in less than 18 months including MRI imaging in more than 2,000 of these participants. Participants in the LIFE Brain Health Study will be followed every 6-12 months with a phone call and bi-annually with in-person visits. We will collect sociodemographic information, family and personal health history, cognitive function using the NIH toolbox, mental health status including information on sleep, depression and anxiety, and information on lifestyle including diet, substance use and accident or injury history. We will also measure blood pressure (monthly using Bluetooth enabled at home blood pressure cuff) as well as collect other data related to cardiovascular/cardio-metabolic risk factors and occupational and environmental exposures. We will perform structural MRI on ~3000 participants who will be selected based on BMI and/or blood pressure, thus ~1000 with normal BMI/BP and ~2000 who are either overweight/obese and/or have high blood pressure. The current plan is for a repeat MRI in 10 years when the youngest participants will be 28 years and oldest participant will be middle age (44 years) old then every 5-10 years thereafter, depending on the research question(s).