Study protocol of the Hungarian Longitudinal Study of Healthy Brain Aging (HuBA)

Abstract

ABSTRACTBackgroundNeurocognitive aging and the associated brain diseases impose a major social and economic burden. Therefore, substantial efforts have been put into revealing the lifestyle, neurobiological and genetic underpinnings of healthy neurocognitive aging. However, these studies take place almost exclusively in a limited number of highly-developed countries. Thus, it is an important open question to what extent their findings may generalize to neurocognitive aging in other, not yet investigated regions.PurposeThe purpose of the Hungarian Longitudinal Study of Healthy Brain Aging (HuBA) is to collect multi-modal longitudinal data on healthy neurocognitive aging to address the data gap in this field in Central and Eastern Europe.MethodsWe adapted the Australian Imaging, Biomarkers and Lifestyle (AIBL) study of aging1study protocol to local circumstances and will collect demographic, lifestyle, mental and physical health, medication and medical history related information as well as record a series of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. In addition, participants will also be offered to participate in the collection of blood samples to assess circulating inflammatory biomarkers as well as a sleep study aimed at evaluating the general sleep quality based on multi-day collection of subjective sleep questionnaires and whole-night electroencephalographic (EEG) data.Results & DiscussionData collection will be longitudinal with 18 months between measurements and at least three sessions are intended. The collected data might reveal specific local trends or could also indicate the generalizability of previous findings. Moreover, as the HuBA protocol also offers a sleep study designed for thorough characterization of participants’ sleep quality and related factors, our extended multi-modal dataset might provide a base for incorporating these measures into healthy and clinical aging research.ConclusionBesides its straightforward national benefits in terms of health expenditure, we hope that this Hungarian initiative could provide results valid for the whole Central and Eastern European region and could also promote aging and Alzheimer’s disease research in these countries.