A massive, multimillion-dollar study will be conducted at UW-Madison to help discover how people age differently. Supported by a $26 million, six-year grant from the National Institute on Aging, the study, \Midlife in the U.S.,"" was announced earlier this month. The study is a collaborative effort between 40 researchers from over a dozen institutions. Carol Ryff, Director of UW'-Madison's Institute of Aging, said the university was selected as the study's home because of its ""strong record in nurturing multidisciplinary collaborations.""
The project, one of the largest ever funded by the NIA, will look into the biological, behavioral, sociological and psychological aspects of aging and will encompass fields ranging from medicine to economics. With a pool of more than 7,000 ethnically-diverse interviewees aged 35 to 85 living across the United States, including about 900 pairs of twins, the study aims to link the psychosocial and medical factors that influence aging and explore why people age differently.
According to the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging, one in six people in America is now 60 years old or older and the fastest growing segment of the population is 85 years old or older. In view of this, a new cross-faculty study on aging,'led by the UW'Madison comes as timely. One of the most unique features of this study is that the wide age range of the participants will allow researchers to study not just those who are old, but also those who are just entering ""midlife.""
The researchers will gather information via a series of interviews and a 100-page questionnaire with questions pertaining to the interviewees' personal backgrounds such as ethnicity, education, income and marital status; social determinants such as family ties, coping strategies and social participation; character and personality; and health behavior, including physical activity, hormone therapy and substance abuse, in addition to other areas.
Between the ages of 30 and 75, the average human body experiences a 30 percent drop in muscle weight, a 25 percent decrease in nerve fibers in the brain, a 50 percent decline in the efficiency of the lungs and a 25 percent decrease in skin thickness. Scientists want to know why and how these changes differ between people of all types.
Participants in the study will be recruited to one of three university hospitals' research centers, including the University of Wisconsin Hospital's General Clinical Research Centers.
""Once at the GCRC, they will have an extensive medical evaluation and be screened with a sophisticated panel of 10 diagnostic measures,"" said Christopher Coe, a professor at UW-Madison who is involved in assessing a number of hormonal, immunological and biochemical measures that may mediate the relationship between psycho-social and biological factors.
Coe said a subset of the participants who live in the Midwest will also be evaluated using the latest brain electro-physiological measures available in Dr. Richard Davidson's UW-Madison laboratory.
""When completed, this will be one of the most comprehensive evaluations of psycho-social factors and physiological status ever completed,"" Coe said. ""It will reveal the degree to which psychological well-being and attitude shapes the process of aging, and can tilt us either toward health or illness.\
