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CHeBA Launches Dementias Platform Australia to Make Study of Ageing ‘Truly Global’
by CHeBA
With dementia affecting all populations globally, in 2021 CHeBA launched Dementias Platform Australia (DPAU) in partnership with the already established Dementias Platform UK (DPUK), with a collective vision of accelerating new discoveries in the understanding and diagnosis of dementia.
The collaboration, which allows for access to research data from multiple dementia studies carried out in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and beyond to all six continents, will enable new insights into ageing, agerelated diseases and risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.
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Professor Perminder Sachdev AM
The challenges posed by dementia are complex. Addressing them requires many smaller pieces of a puzzle to come together to increase our understanding of brain function and of the risks that genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors pose to healthy brain ageing.
While the contribution of one research participant, one researcher or one study is often modest, the ability to combine data across many studies has a potential not yet fully realised.
The DPAU platform, which uses secure technology deployed at Monash University, will house data on physical and brain health from studies conducted around the world. Monash SeRP is a secure, trusted and scalable environment for data sharing, governance, control and management services for researchers.
According to Dr Vibeke Catts, Research Manager at CHeBA and project leader of DPAU, dementia research will be reshaped through the hosting of data from international longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of brain ageing.
“The impact that health and medical research has on society cannot be underestimated,” says Dr Catts.
“DPAU allows for critical information about disease trends and risk factors, outcomes of treatment or public health interventions as well as methods of care and associated costs.”
DPAU is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to the Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium (COSMIC) led by CHeBA CoDirector Professor Perminder Sachdev. COSMIC aims to identify risk and protective factors and biomarkers of cognitive ageing and dementia in diverse ethno-racial groups and geographical settings and currently comprises data from 44 studies across the globe.
