Lifestyle, multi-omics features, and preclinical dementia among Chinese: The ...

chenyaoxin

China has the largest number of patientswith dementia in the world. However, demen- tia in the Chinese population isstill poorly understood and under-researched. Given the differences in genetic,demographic, sociocultural, lifestyle, and health profiles among Chinese andother ethnic/racial groups, it is crucial to build appropriate infras- tructurefor long-term longitudinal studies to advance Chinese cognitive aging anddementia research. We initiated a community-based prospective cohort—theTaizhou Imaging Study (TIS)—to accelerate the understanding of dementia andcerebrovascular diseases in Chinese. This article presents the rationale, aims,study design, and orga- nization of TIS. In addition, we described someexamples of the types of studies such a resource might support. The TISprovides a new framework for facilitating Chinese dementia research,encompassing invaluable resources including detailed epidemio- logical,sociocultural, neuroimaging, and omics data.