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Abstract
Introduction Maintaining cognitive health in later life is a global priority. Encouraging individuals to make health behaviour changes, such as regular physical activity, and providing supportive urban environments can help maintain cognitive health, thereby preventing or delaying the progress of dementia and cognitive decline. However, the mechanistic pathways by which the urban environmental exposome influences cognitive health outcomes are poorly understood. The aim of this study is to use granular measures of the urban environment exposome (encompassing the built, natural and social environment) and physical activity to explore how these interact with a person’s biology to ultimately influence cognitive health outcomes.
Methods and analysis This ongoing study uses a cohort design, recruiting participants from the Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longitudinal study of Ageing and the Harmonised Cognitive Assessment Protocol study. Participants (n=400 at each wave) will be aged ≥65 years and have the capacity to provide written informed consent. Measures include device-measured physical activity (Actigraph wGT3XP-BT), environmental location data (Global Positioning System, Qstarz BT-Q1000XT), linked to a battery of neuropsychological tests, including the Mini Mental State Examination and the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Blood-derived biochemical, genetic and epigenetic data will be included in multimodal analyses. These data will be integrated with urban environment Geographic Information System data and analysed using causal inference and mediation methods to investigate plausible mechanistic pathways.
Ethics and dissemination This study has been approved by the Queen’s University Belfast, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences Research Ethics Committee (MHLS 21_72). Alongside peer-reviewed publications in high-ranking international journals, dissemination activities include conference presentations, project videos, working papers, policy briefing papers, newsletters, summaries and case study stories.
- Aging
- Dementia
- EPIDEMIOLOGY
- GENETICS
- PUBLIC HEALTH
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Footnotes
X @Ruth_HunterQUB, @trottsumo, @hkucukali, @mckinley_geojen, @calummarr, @a_j_mcknight
Contributors RFH contributed to conceptualisation, methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing, project administration and original study design, funding acquisition, guarantor. CC contributed to conceptualisation, methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing and project administration. HK contributed to methodology, writing—review and editing. MT contributed to methodology, writing—review and editing and project administration. SO’N contributed to methodology, writing—review and editing and project administration. SM contributed to methodology, writing—review and editing. FK contributed to methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing, original study design and funding acquisition. JMM contributed to methodology, writing—review and editing, supervision and funding acquisition. CN contributed to methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing. LO’H contributed to methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing. CM contributed to methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing. MM contributed to methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing. GE contributed to methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing, original study design, funding acquisition. AM contributed to conceptualisation, methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing, project administration and original study design, funding acquisition. JS contributed to conceptualisation, methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing. JMP contributed to methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing, original study design, funding acquisition. TD contributed to methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing, original study design, funding acquisition. BM contributed to conceptualisation, methodology, writing—original protocol, writing—review and editing, project administration and original study design, funding acquisition.
Funding UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge Social, Behavioural and Design Research Programme (ES/V016075/1), The Atlantic Philanthropies (NA), the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/L008459/1), National Institutes of Health (R01AG068937), Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Research and Development Office (STL/5569/19), Science Foundation Ireland and the Department for the Economy (NA), Northern Ireland US partnership award (15/IA/3152), Kidney Research UK (NA), The Stoneygate Trust (NA), Medical Research Council (MC_PC_20026), the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (NA), and the National Institute of Health (5RO1AG060167-03).
Disclaimer The authors alone are responsible for the interpretation of the data and any views or opinions presented are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the NICOLA study team.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research. Refer to the Methods section for further details.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
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