The Stress & Health Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Whitehall II Study
IRAS ID
158963
Contact name
Smaragda Agathou
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Joint Research Office - UCL
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
85/0938, NHS REC Ref; Z6364106/Section 19/Research/Social Research, UCL Data Protection Registration Number
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 31 days
Research summary
The Whitehall II study was begun in 1985 and has played a key role in advancing knowledge regarding the effects of social circumstances on health and the biological pathways by which they operate, with a particular focus on cardiovascular disease. Findings from the study have had major impact internationally on the understanding of, and policies to address, social inequalities in health. Our current proposal, exploiting the detailed data collected over the past 25 years, aims to identify key determinants of late life depression, cognitive decline, and physical functioning based on 30 years of follow-up of the Whitehall II study
Life expectancy has doubled in the last century leading to considerable ageing of populations. The susceptibility to specific morbidities increases with age and research on ageing is a key societal and scientific priority. Much current research on ageing assesses putative risk factors in elderly populations where it is difficult to tease apart the cause from the effect. Increasingly, research suggests that it is midlife levels of risk factors that are important for health outcomes in old age. The research design with repeat measures of both risk factors and functioning starting in midlife is ideally suited to allow the identification of the best targets of preventing these age-related conditions. For example, it is possible that blood pressure levels well below the threshold for clinical intervention are important for cognitive health in old age. The underlying hypothesis behind this strategy is that prevention discoveries are likely to come from study of factors that are not currently targeted for intervention. The assets for discovery in W-II are data on a wider array of adulthood risk factors, measured repeatedly at regular intervals, than any other large-scale UK cohort study, and the high-resolution measurements of depressive and anxiety symptoms, cognitive and physical functioning.
More specific aims are :
•Estimate the contribution of midlife inflammatory, vascular, and metabolic factors to later life depression, cognitive impairment, and functional health.
•Assess whether the adoption of healthy lifestyle even at older ages modifies functional trajectories.
•Quantify the associations of SES, cognitive reserve, social engagement and connectness with late life depression, cognitive decline and physical functioning.
•Identify rare but large-effect genetic variants contributing to extreme differences in ageing-related risk factors and biomarkers in a collaborative venture.
•Develop multi-factorial predictive algorithms, like those developed for cardiovascular diseases, to facilitate early identification of adverse ageing outcomes.REC name
Scotland A: Adults with Incapacity only
REC reference
16/SS/0003
Date of REC Opinion
2 Feb 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion