The meeting will be held in English.
Arranged by: EpiHealth in Uppsala. Lars Lind.
When: Monday October 12th.
Time:1.00 – 5:00 PM
NEAR’s second scientific workshop was conducted remotely over Zoom with 82 connected participants. It was chaired by Debora Rizzuto.
After a short update and welcome address by Laura Fratiglioni, Johan Skoog from the University of Gothenburg presented the NEAR sleep disturbance and cognition project, an ongoing cooperation between researchers in the H70, KP&SNAC-K, GÅS/SNAC-S, CAIDE studies and the NEAR operational group. Both insomnia in midlife and long sleep duration has been shown to be associated with higher risk for dementia, and sleep disturbances are also associated with lower MMSE scores. Multi-level models are applied but more work is needed to harmonize the differing variable measurements between the studies.
Linda Enroth from Tampere University, Finland, presented the outline of a project she is setting up, using NEAR data from nine studies. The general aim of the project is to examine the health consequences of the increasing life expectancy by analyzing disability rates and trajectories during the last years of life. It further seeks to investigate the role of sex and socioeconomic inequality behind these traits.
Enrico Ripamonti, NEAR statistician, gave a presentation on ongoing collaborative work regarding lifetime determinants of the cognitive status in older age. The work employs several waves from six databases from SOFI, NEAR and Finnish studies, including life-level analyses of younger age cohorts with outcomes at high age (>75 years).
The NEAR platform for database access and analysis will be launched during the autumn. Xiaonan Hu, NEAR data scientist, ended the workshop by demonstrating its functionality and showing examples from the SNAC-K study, which is already accessible.
The presentations rendered many follow-up questions and positive comments and will likely lead to future cooperations.
The Swedish Delegation for Senior Labour has published a new report: “70 is the new 50”, written by Professor Ingmar Skoog at the University of Gothenburg, who’s a member of the NEAR Steering Board.
The report builds on results from the H70 database studies in Gothenburg and shows that today’s 70–75 year olds are much more healthy and active than some decades ago. Many are able to stay in the workforce well beyond the present retirement age (65–67 years in Sweden).
Read the press release and report (in Swedish)
The NEAR database managers will conduct an E-meeting on 16 April.
The different regional projects within The Swedish National study on Aging and Care (SNAC) have begun their 7th wave of data collection in 2019 and will continue into 2022. In this phase there is both a follow-up of previous participants and also a recruitment of new cohorts of 60 and 81 year olds.
The Gothenburg population studies consist of several cohorts (H70, H85, H95+) and a Women’s Survey (KVUS).
– In the H70 cohort, data were collected at the age of 75, in 2019. This data collection is expected to continue in 2020 and the last surveys will be completed in the spring of 2021.
– In the H85 cohort, surveys of the cohort born in 1930 at the age of 88 were completed in 2019. Investigation at the age of 90 will begin in the autumn of 2020.
– In the H95+ cohort, a survey of the cohort born 1923-24 at the age of 95 was completed in 2019. Survey at 97 years starts in the autumn of 2020.
– In the KVUS Survey, a 50-year follow-up was completed in 2019. The 52-year follow-up will begin in the autumn of 2020.
The SWEOLD project is preparing pilot interviews for their 6th wave to be conducted soon, with a planned start in late March, 2020.