Study populations

Since 1987 we have made major investments in collecting phenotypically well characterized population samples for which we have bio-materials for further study. These include, amongst others, 

• the Leiden 85-Plus Study, an unique cohort of very old people who are followed for survival and specific causes of death (1500 individuals)

• the Leiden Longevity Study, an unprecedented large series of 500 very old sib-pairs together with 1500 kindreds and 1000 spouse-controls

• the Africa Longevity Study, an unique population based sample of 1500 newborns, 500 very old age and 2000 women with fertility histories from the remote area of Bawku East Ghana

• the PROSPER Study, a cohort of 5804 elderly participants included in a cholesterol lowering trial.    

Since 2003 we have also invested in accruing cell strains from phenotypically well characterized elderly people which lineages are followed in culture for cellular characteristics including senescence, cell-arrest and apoptosis. At present we have frozen cells in our tissue bank from some 70 lineages from an equal number of 90-year olds.

More information on our studies can be found at  LangLeven.net (only available in Dutch)