COSMIC

COSMIC is an international consortium to combine data from population-based longitudinal cohort studies to identify common risk factors for dementia and cognitive decline.

By the end of 2021 there were 45 international studies participating in COSMIC. For a full list of studies involved, see https://cheba.unsw.edu.au/consortia/cosmic/studies

The major highlights for COSMIC in 2021 include:

1. Signing an MOU with 4 new studies: a. Boston Puerto Rican Health Study; b. Framingham Heart Study; c. The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing; d. A study from Uganda. 2. Three new projects were approved, led by either

CHeBA researchers or international workgroups: a. The association between diet and depression in older adults; b. Untangling the mechanistic links between heart and brain health in older populations: An Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted toolkit for assessing dementia risk; c. Trajectories of cognitive decline before and after stroke: an individual participant data metaanalysis from the COSMIC collaboration.

3. One paper was published: a. Hyun J, Hall CB, Katz MJ, Derby CA, Lipnicki DM, Crawford JD, Guaita A, Vaccaro R, Davin A, Kim KW, Han JW, Bae JB, Röhr S, Riedel-Heller S, Ganguli M, Jacobsen E, Hughes TF, Brodaty H, Kochan NA, Trollor J, Lobo A, Santabarbara J, Lopez-Anton R, Sachdev PS, Lipton RB; or Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium (COSMIC). Education, Occupational Complexity, and Incident Dementia: A COSMIC Collaborative Cohort Study. J Alzheimers Dis. 2021 Nov 11. doi: 10.3233/JAD-210627. Online ahead of print. PMID: 34776437 4. Presentations at international conferences, including five at AAIC, by project leaders from CHeBA and external to UNSW. 5. International collaborations with: a. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. We facilitated the provision of data from 16 COSMIC cohorts for the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study; b. The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative, who are providing funding and resources to COSMIC cohorts from Malaysia, Singapore, and The Philippines for the collection of new behavioural and genetic data through the use of digital tools and blood assays;

c. COVID-19 study led by Sarah Baurermeister (University of Oxford), to which around 6 COSMIC cohorts are contributing. 6. Dementias Platform Australia (DPAU). a. The website was launched late in the year; b. Twenty-one COSMIC studies have agreed to upload data to DPAU (another 7 are unable to do so but have agreed to be listed on the site); c. Descriptive summaries have been reviewed and approved for 29 COSMIC studies.

Staff

Professor Perminder

Sachdev
Professor Henry

Brodaty
Dr Darren Lipnicki
Dr Jiyang Jiang
Dr Suraj Samtani
Dr John Crawford
Dr Ben Lam
Dr Nicole Kochan
Dr Louise Mewton
Nicholas Hoy
Jessica Lo
Rachel Visontay
Ashley Stevens
Saly Mahalingam

Students

Dr Matthew Lennon
Annabel Matison