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Women's Healthy Ageing Project

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The Women's Healthy Ageing Project (WHAP) is the longest ongoing medical research project examining the health of Australian women.[1] Its landmark studies concern women's heart and brain health, a long-neglected area of specialised research.[1]

Women's Healthy Ageing Project
Type of projectMedical research
LocationAustralia
OwnerUniversity of Melbourne Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences & Centre for Neuroscience at the Royal Melbourne Hospital
Key peopleProfessor Cassandra Szoeke, Director & Principal Investigator

Professor Lorraine Dennerstein, Chair Scientific Advisory Board

Professor Philippe Lehert, Lead Statistician

Professor John Hopper (scientist), Chair Scientific Advisory Board
Established1990

It began in 1990 as a longitudinal study of more than 400 Australian-born women and has been recording health changes for 30 years, from midlife to later-life.[2]

The study is run within the Healthy Ageing Program, a research group at the University of Melbourne School of Medicine, in collaboration with the Centre for Medical Research at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.[3]

The Healthy Ageing Program consists of WHAP (1990); the WHAP Generations Study (2021), involving children of the original 1990 WHAP participants; and AgeHAPPY (Healthy Ageing Project Population Youth-Senior) (2018), an online health survey of more than 5,000 participants assessing the impact of lifestyle factors on health and ageing.[4]

History

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The program was established in 1990 by leading women's health researcher and psychiatrist Lorraine Dennerstein, who initiated the study to address the lack of attention paid by Australian medical research to diseases women have.[5][6] WHAP continues to address this issue as it persists in current epidemiological research, heightening awareness with regard to the progression of women through menopause and into ageing.[7]

The project was initiated as a cohort study of more than 2,000 women in 1990. In 1992, the project commenced with the longitudinal followup of over 400 of the original participants. In its first decade, the WHAP was known as the Melbourne Women's Midlife Health Project (MWMHP).[8]

The study's present director and principal investigator is Professor Cassandra Szoeke, a neurologist and researcher in the University of Melbourne School of Medicine.[1] Professor Lorraine Dennerstein and Australian genetic epidemiologist Professor John Hopper serve on the Scientific Advisory Board.[9][10] Professor Philippe Lehert, a scientist and researcher in mathematical statistics and biostatistics is the Lead Statistician.[11]

WHAP functions as a teaching resource for University of Melbourne post-graduate students who are involved in assessing WHAP women, data-entry, data analysis and contributing to scientific publications.[12]

Research

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WHAP aims to identify modifiable midlife risk factors for the development of diseases in later life, improve understanding of the development of age-related chronic diseases, and carry out early disease identification using clinical, biomarker and health risk factors.[8]

With more than 30 years of longitudinal follow up, re-assessing each participant every four years, the study is distinct from other longitudinal datasets in Australia. It maintains a detailed, individualised biobank (including individual DNA and RNA data), imaging database (BMD, XR, MRI, fMRI & Amyloid PET) and physical, in-person measures including biomarkers, clinical assessments, and biometrics.[7] From 1990 to date, the study has built a substantial database of measures such as mood, full neuropsychiatric batteries, dietary intake, physical activity and social connectedness.[7] Together, these individualised datasets allow WHAP to identify patterns and trends across a lifespan and ultimately improve the wellbeing of women in the second half of their lives.[7]

Throughout the lifetime of the project, it has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles in the fields of neurology and cognitive disease, gerontology, psychiatry, women's health, internal medicine and medical imaging.[7] Articles written by WHAP researchers have appeared in leading journals including The Lancet, JAMA, PLOS One, Neurobiology of Aging and Maturitas.[13][14][15][16][17]

The study's findings have informed the development of international and national policy guidelines on women's health in reports published by Alzheimer's Disease International, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, National Academies Press Institute of Medicine, Global Council on Brain Health and Women's Alzheimer's Movement.[18][19][20][21]

The study is governed by a Scientific Advisory Board, including three of the original chief investigators as well as leading clinicians and academic researchers who specialise in a range of areas including cardiovascular health, endocrinology, geriatrics, neurology, obstetrics and gynaecology, psychiatry, public health, epidemiology, rheumatology and women's health.[8]

Collaborators

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WHAP researchers have contributed expertise to various international collaborations, including the Global Burden of Disease Study on dementia and the Asia Pacific node of the International Women's Brain Project.[22][23][24] Data from the study also contributed to the ReSTAGE Collaboration's Stages of Reproductive Aging Workshop (STRAW) in 2001, facilitating a global standardised staging system for reproductive aging.[25]

Nationally, WHAP collaborates with a number of biomarker programs, ageing studies and brain health initiatives, including Monash University's ASPREE Healthy Ageing Biobank, the Australian Imaging, Biomarker & Lifestyle Flagship Study of Ageing and the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation.[26]

Media

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The World Economic Forum featured WHAP research in an article on the importance of regular exercise in middle age for preventing cognitive decline.[27]

In Dancing with Dementia, a 2015 episode of the Australian TV program SBS Insight, the study's research was used to inform the program's discussion of living with dementia.[28] Its findings on improving modifiable risk factors to prevent Alzheimer's disease were featured in a 2016 episode of the Australian TV program ABC Catalyst.[29][30]

Funding

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The Women's Healthy Ageing Project is primarily funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) as well as a number of national associations and foundations affiliated with cognitive ageing and women's health.[31]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "'I would watch every episode': charting the 30-year study into Australian women's ageing". The Guardian. 2021-09-25. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  2. ^ "What we've learned about women's health over 30 years". ABC Radio National. 2021-08-31. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  3. ^ "Cognition- Impact of Ageing and Menopause – AMS". Retrieved 2022-05-02.
  4. ^ Cigognini, Brendan (2021-07-26). "AgeHAPPY: Healthy Ageing Project Population Youth-senior". Melbourne Medical School. Retrieved 2022-02-10.
  5. ^ "The good woman doctor". The Age. Melbourne. 2004-12-05. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  6. ^ Priestley, Angela (2021-11-02). "These are the 'loads' impacting women's health". Women's Agenda. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  7. ^ a b c d e Szoeke, Cassandra; Coulson, Melissa; Campbell, Stephen; Dennerstein, Lorraine (2016-10-04). "Cohort profile: Women's Healthy Ageing Project (WHAP)- a longitudinal prospective study of Australian women since 1990". Women's Midlife Health. 2: 5. doi:10.1186/s40695-016-0018-y. ISSN 2054-2690. PMC 6300017. PMID 30766701.
  8. ^ a b c Szoeke, Cassandra E. I.; Robertson, Joanne S.; Rowe, Christopher C.; Yates, Paul; Campbell, Katherine; Masters, Colin L.; Ames, David; Dennerstein, Lorraine; Desmond, Patricia (2013-12-01). "The Women's Healthy Ageing Project: Fertile ground for investigation of healthy participants 'at risk' for dementia". International Review of Psychiatry. 25 (6): 726–737. doi:10.3109/09540261.2013.873394. ISSN 0954-0261. PMID 24423225. S2CID 109484.
  9. ^ "The good woman doctor". The Age. 2004-12-05. Retrieved 2022-05-02.
  10. ^ "Director, Professor John Hopper". www.twins.org.au. Retrieved 2022-05-02.
  11. ^ "Philippe Lehert - Med.E.A." 2020-06-29. Retrieved 2022-05-02.
  12. ^ Irvine-Nagle, Kali (2022-04-29). "Healthy Ageing Program". Melbourne Medical School. Retrieved 2022-05-24.
  13. ^ Nichols, Emma; Szoeke, Cassandra E I; Vollset, Stein Emil; Abbasi, Nooshin; Abd-Allah, Foad; Abdela, Jemal; Aichour, Miloud Taki Eddine; Akinyemi, Rufus O; Alahdab, Fares; Asgedom, Solomon W; Awasthi, Ashish (January 2019). "Global, regional, and national burden of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016". The Lancet Neurology. 18 (1): 88–106. doi:10.1016/s1474-4422(18)30403-4. ISSN 1474-4422. PMC 6291454. PMID 30497964.
  14. ^ Martinkova, Julie; Quevenco, Frances-Catherine; Karcher, Helene; Ferrari, Alberto; Sandset, Else Charlotte; Szoeke, Cassandra; Hort, Jakub; Schmidt, Reinhold; Chadha, Antonella Santuccione; Ferretti, Maria Teresa (2021-09-13). "Proportion of Women and Reporting of Outcomes by Sex in Clinical Trials for Alzheimer Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis". JAMA Network Open. 4 (9): e2124124. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.24124. hdl:11343/289716. ISSN 2574-3805. PMID 34515784. S2CID 237491415.
  15. ^ Szoeke, Cassandra; Dang, Christa; Lehert, Philippe; Hickey, Martha; Morris, Meg E.; Dennerstein, Lorraine; Campbell, Stephen (2017-04-12). "Unhealthy habits persist: The ongoing presence of modifiable risk factors for disease in women". PLOS ONE. 12 (4): e0173603. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1273603S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0173603. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5389802. PMID 28403144.
  16. ^ Ryan, Joanne; Stanczyk, Frank Z.; Dennerstein, Lorraine; Mack, Wendy J.; Clark, Margaret S.; Szoeke, Cassandra; Kildea, Daniel; Henderson, Victor W. (2012-03-01). "Hormone levels and cognitive function in postmenopausal midlife women". Neurobiology of Aging. 33 (3): 617.e11–617.e22. doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2010.07.014. ISSN 0197-4580. PMID 20888079. S2CID 21693394.
  17. ^ Burn, Katherine; Szoeke, Cassandra (2016-01-01). "Boomerang families and failure-to-launch: Commentary on adult children living at home". Maturitas. 83: 9–12. doi:10.1016/j.maturitas.2015.09.004. ISSN 0378-5122. PMID 26597141.
  18. ^ Brooker, Dawn; Peel, Elizabeth; Erol, Rosie (2015-06-01). Women and Dementia: A global research review (Report).
  19. ^ Lyons, Amanda (8 January 2019). "Study finds modifiable risk factors may have impact on dementia". Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
  20. ^ Medicine, Institute of (2015). Blazer, Dan G.; Yaffe, Kristine; Liverman, Catharyn T. (eds.). Cognitive Aging: Progress in Understanding and Opportunities for Action. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. ISBN 978-0-309-36862-9.
  21. ^ "It's Time to Act: The Challenges of Alzheimer's and Dementia for Women" (PDF). American Association of Retired Persons. 21 May 2020.
  22. ^ Annab, Rachid (2019-02-13). "The global burden of dementia has doubled since 1990". Newsroom. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  23. ^ "Team - Women's Brain Project". 2021-11-01. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  24. ^ "Secrets of Women's Healthy Ageing: Professor Cassandra Szoeke In-Conversation with Professor Susan Hillier". University of South Australia. 2021-10-06.
  25. ^ Harlow, Siobán D.; Mitchell, Ellen S.; Crawford, Sybil; Nan, Bin; Little, Roderick; Taffe, John (January 2008). "The ReSTAGE Collaboration: Defining Optimal Bleeding Criteria for Onset of Early Menopausal Transition". Fertility and Sterility. 89 (1): 129–140. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2007.02.015. ISSN 0015-0282. PMC 2225986. PMID 17681300.
  26. ^ "ASPREE Healthy Ageing Biobank". Monash University. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  27. ^ "Is this the key to preventing dementia?". World Economic Forum. 15 June 2016. Retrieved 2022-06-03.
  28. ^ "Insight S2015 Ep11 - Dancing With Dementia". Guide. 2015-04-28. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  29. ^ Alzheimer's - Can we prevent it?, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2016-08-23, retrieved 2022-02-01
  30. ^ Cigognini, Brendan (2016-12-15). "Healthy Ageing Program on ABC Catalyst". Melbourne Medical School. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  31. ^ Szoeke, Cassandra; Dang, Christa; Lehert, Philippe; Hickey, Martha; Morris, Meg E.; Dennerstein, Lorraine; Campbell, Stephen (2017-07-07). "Correction: Unhealthy habits persist: The ongoing presence of modifiable risk factors for disease in women". PLOS ONE. 12 (7): e0181287. Bibcode:2017PLoSO..1281287S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0181287. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5501659. PMID 28686732.
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