Novel methods of risk factor evaluation in aging and dementia: an international collaborative study

This application seeks to produce an international collaboration amongst established scientists who study what factors might increase the risk of dementia and other late-life diseases. Collaborators will come from Australia and Sweden. We have developed a method of estimating how fit or frail a person is, using data from two large Canadian studies. This method seems to work quite well in predicting lifespan, even amongst people who are very elderly. Now we want to know whether this measure of relative fitness and frailty works as well with people from other countries. Each of the researchers from other countries will bring to the collaboration a thorough understanding of how risk factors are identified now. They will each also have access to at least one large study, from a representative sample of people from their own country. Our study has the potential to be helpful in understanding health status both at the individual level and at the population level. This claim is based on an important insight, which is that what is true of people as individuals can sometimes be true of people as groups. That insight, which is called scale invariance, is an important discovery from our new approach. If it holds in other populations, it is likely to tell us something fundamental about health and aging.