The SPIN cohort
The SPIN cohort (Sant Pau Initiative on Neurodegeneration) is helping us to learn many aspects about Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. A greater knowledge of these diseases brings us a little closer to an effective treatment.
The participants of the SPIN cohort (patients and healthy volunteers) collaborate in the performance of a series of diagnostic and follow-up tests that allow us to know what biochemical and structural alterations occur in these diseases.
In an article recently published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions, we gather the details related to the different protocols followed within the SPIN cohort. Knowing these technical details is useful for other research centers that can apply the same type of studies, with the same characteristics, and thus make them more comparable with ours. This greatly facilitates collaboration between different centers, a fundamental aspect in the investigation of new diagnostic tools or in the knowledge of diseases.
The details published in the article specify, for example, what tests are administered in the neuropsychological examination for the evaluation of memory and other cognitive functions. We also explain how we collect, store and analyze blood and cerebrospinal fluid samples for the study of biomarkers related to neurodegenerative diseases. Technical parameters are also detailed in reference to neuroimaging studies such as magnetic resonance imaging or nuclear medicine imaging.
Studies derived from the SPIN cohort have already yielded numerous results that have been reflected in papers, communications and scientific publications. In this link you will find an informative document where we summarize the main results of studies in the SPIN cohort.