Study protocol: The Whitehall II imaging sub-study.

Filippini, N; Zsoldos, E; Haapakoski, R; Sexton, CE; Mahmood, A; Allan, CL; Topiwala, A; Valkanova, V; Brunner, EJ; Shipley, MJ; +21 more...Auerbach, E; Moeller, S; Uğurbil, K; Xu, J; Yacoub, E; Andersson, J; Bijsterbosch, J; Clare, S; Griffanti, L; Hess, AT; Jenkinson, M; Miller, KL; Salimi-Khorshidi, G; Sotiropoulos, SN; Voets, NL; Smith, SM; Geddes, JR; Singh-Manoux, A; Mackay, CE; Kivimäki, M; Ebmeier, KP and (2014) Study protocol: The Whitehall II imaging sub-study. BMC psychiatry, 14 (1). 159-. ISSN 1471-244X DOI: 10.1186/1471-244X-14-159
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BACKGROUND: The Whitehall II (WHII) study of British civil servants provides a unique source of longitudinal data to investigate key factors hypothesized to affect brain health and cognitive ageing. This paper introduces the multi-modal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocol and cognitive assessment designed to investigate brain health in a random sample of 800 members of the WHII study. METHODS/DESIGN: A total of 6035 civil servants participated in the WHII Phase 11 clinical examination in 2012-2013. A random sample of these participants was included in a sub-study comprising an MRI brain scan, a detailed clinical and cognitive assessment, and collection of blood and buccal mucosal samples for the characterisation of immune function and associated measures. Data collection for this sub-study started in 2012 and will be completed by 2016. The participants, for whom social and health records have been collected since 1985, were between 60-85 years of age at the time the MRI study started. Here, we describe the pre-specified clinical and cognitive assessment protocols, the state-of-the-art MRI sequences and latest pipelines for analyses of this sub-study. DISCUSSION: The integration of cutting-edge MRI techniques, clinical and cognitive tests in combination with retrospective data on social, behavioural and biological variables during the preceding 25 years from a well-established longitudinal epidemiological study (WHII cohort) will provide a unique opportunity to examine brain structure and function in relation to age-related diseases and the modifiable and non-modifiable factors affecting resilience against and vulnerability to adverse brain changes.


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