Healthy Aging and Dementia: Findings from the Nun Study

• DOI: 10.7326/0003-4819-139-5_part_2-200309021-00014
• Publication Date: 2013-05-29T12:11:48Z
• Authors: David A. Snowdon
• Keywords: Centenarian; Neuropathology

The Nun Study is a longitudinal study of 678 Catholic sisters 75 to 107 years age who are members the School Sisters Notre Dame congregation. Data collected for this include early and middle-life risk factors from convent archives, annual cognitive physical function evaluations during old age, postmortem neuropathologic participants' brains. case histories presented centenarian was model healthy aging, 92-year-old with dementia clinically significant Alzheimer disease neuropathology vascular lesions, cognitively physically intact almost no neuropathology, an 85-year-old well-preserved despite genetic predisposition abundance lesions. These provide examples how aging relate degree pathology present in brain level resistance clinical expression neuropathology.