79th Newsletter
Happy Birthday
I can’t believe it has been almost a year since the birthday roadshows. It was really good to talk with those who attended the events, and I hope everyone who came had an enjoyable time. We have included some photos from the events in the Newsletter.
This year is the 10th anniversary of the NSHD neuroimaging sub-study, called Insight 46. This study has been going from strength to strength, and it is now in its third wave of data collection. The findings from the study have been crucial to our understanding of how the brain changes as we age. Over the last 10 years the study has published 40 papers, which have led to more than 20 mentions in the news. We have also presented this data in almost 100 research posters and presentations at scientific meetings around the world. To collect the data there have been over 2000 days of visits, 1300 MRI scans done, and 315 lumbar punctures completed. There have been more than 50 staff working on organizing the visits and collecting and analysing the study data, of which eight were PhD students who have now qualified, and there have been 16 births to members of the study team. A big thank you to everyone who has taken part in the study; this study would not have been possible without you.
Also, thank you to everyone who has completed the most recent questionnaire. If you have not yet completed it and would like to so, please send it back as soon as possible. This questionnaire is to find out how you are physically and mentally, as well as what support you are accessing and medication taken.
The plans for the next year include continuing wave 3 Insight 46 visits. We have recruited 522 so far out of a target of 650 by the end of 2026. This year we will also be continuing to collect data on the Garmin Watch. We have reached the target of 600 study members and will be finishing off collecting the data; the study is now closed to new recruitment.
I wish you all the best for 2025 and thank you for continuing to be part of the NSHD. Your time and commitment to the study are greatly appreciated.
Insight 46 Update
2025 marks the 10-year anniversary of the start of the NSHD neuroimaging sub-study, called Insight 46. The aim of the study is to gain a better understanding of how the brain changes as we age. We are using MRI scanners to get detailed images of the brain. The study also involves tests of memory and thinking, physical assessments, and cardiovascular measures. We will combine all this information to look for changes in the brain that affect memory and thinking. The goal is to see if we can spot early changes in the brain that may lead to dementia.
In late 2021 we started the third wave of this data collection, which will be running until 2026. The study requires a trip to London for two days of testing, including an MRI brain scan. We are using specialist equipment and scanners which means it is not possible to run the study in local hospitals. If you would like to see a video of what the research visit entails, please visit https://tinyurl.com/MRCInsight46Video.
As of January 2025, we have completed research visits for 522 participants. Thank you if you have already taken part. We are continuing to invite study members from across the country. We recognise it might not always be possible for everyone to come to London, but we want to make sure everyone has the chance to take part. If you previously declined an invitation but have changed your mind and would like to take part, please get in touch with us.
Some Insight 46 participants have also been invited to take part in the home sleep study, called Insleep46. This involves participants placing an electronic sleep mat under their home mattress that passively collects information, including sleep quality, heart rate, and breathing.
Online Cognitive Testing Update 2025
Online memory and thinking tests are an important tool for the future as they allow us to collect large amounts of data, in a cost- and time-effective way, from the comfort of a person’s own home. However, little research looks at how usable online tests are to older populations.
In the summer of 2023, we invited those of you with email addresses to participate in a series of online memory and thinking tests from the ‘Cognitron’ battery of tests. These tests were completed at home, in your own time, using your own computer or tablet.
We reviewed your feedback and identified key improvement for future online tests.
MyoFit 46 Update
MyoFit46 is the cardiovascular sub-study of the NSHD. In 2024 we completed recruitment, with 505 study members taking part. Our team is currently busy analysing your heart MRI and ECG data and we are expecting some key scientific discoveries to emerge, some of which might have profound public health importance, notably:
1) we are investigating your blood pressure throughout the life-course impacted the microcirculation of your hearts and the burden of fibrosis (scare tissue) in the heart muscle wall.
2) we are studying the health of your great artery (the aorta) to understand why some people age with healthy, flexible aortas while others develop stiff, non-compliant aortas in older age. We are also looking at how your aorta responded to the stress medication you received at the time of the heart MRI scan. We are particularly interested in understanding if there are any difference in aortic behaviours between men and women.
3) we have studied your ECGs using artificial intelligence to estimate the biological age of your heart. This is being used to help us understand why some of you with a chronological age of 75 have hearts ‘fit for a 60 year old’, while others exhibit ‘older’ and therefore sicker hearts. We will be studying the lifestyle patterns and health trajectories of those of you living with ultra-fit hearts, in the hope that you may teach us how to improve the cardiovascular longevity of the general public.
4) with your help through MyoFit46 we have invented the ECG-imaging vest that has now been used successfully in over 1,000 participants, including in more than 500 NHS patients. This new medical device is showing promise to help us more accurately predict which patients are at risk of a cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death. We are currently in the process of further developing the vest in order to get it ready for NHS roll-out at scale. This innovation would not have been possible without the study members who so kindly donated their time to our research. An immense thank you, from the entire MyoFit46 team.
Your Health at age 77
The recent home visit can tell us about your health at age 77, and how this has changed over time.
Medications
When asked “Are you currently taking any medication?”, 90% of study members answered “Yes”. This has increased since age 69, where 79.7% of study members were taking one or more medications.
The average number of medications which study members are on is 5 and the maximum number of medications was 20.
At age 69, the median number of medications was 2 and the maximum number of medications taken was 16.
Balance
The average time for being able to stand on one leg with eyes open was 14.76 seconds for men and 14.55 seconds for women. 28% of the study members who took part in the task were able to stand on one leg with eyes opened for 30 seconds.
The average time for standing on one leg with eyes shut was 2.72 seconds for men and 2.55 seconds for women. Only two study members were able to stand on one leg for the full 30 seconds with their eyes shut.
The standing on one leg test has now been carried out 4 times, which means we can see how it changes with age. Graph 1 shows the average time for standing on one leg with eyes closed. The average time in seconds for the cohort has been reducing since it was first carried out at age 53 years.

Hand grip
Hand grip strength was measured in both left and right hands a number of times and the maximum measure was taken. The average maximum hand grip for men was 36.3kg and 22.2kg for women. These averages are within the normal range for your age group.
The hand grip test has now been carried out four times and graph 2 shows how the maximum average hand grip has changed over time.

Thank you to everyone who took part in the latest visit.
Latest Research using NSHD data
Physical activity and brain health
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We previously found that engaging in leisure time physical activity (e.g., hiking, swimming), at any extent across the life course, was linked with better preserved cognitive function at age 70. This relationship was strongest in people who had always been active, but we even found this beneficial relationship in those who had only recently started to be active. We have now expanded on this work to see how physical activity was linked to brain health at age 70 (particularly early markers of Alzheimer’s disease). We found that being physically active, especially before your 50’s, was linked to having a larger hippocampus (the brain area mainly responsible for memory) at age 70. While being physically active wasn’t directly related with other Alzheimer’s disease markers in the brain (such as amyloid proteins and cortical thinning), being active helped those with early Alzheimer’s disease markers to maintain their cognitive function, and this was particularly the case for women.
If this finding is replicated in other studies, it may indicate that lifelong physical activity may protect you from cognitive impairment and preserve brain health. This suggests physical activity could be a key factor in delaying Alzheimer’s symptoms and enhancing cognitive resilience. Further research is needed to understand its potential as a preventive intervention.
Social isolation across the lifecourse and multiple generations in Britain
Despite growing concerns in the UK about social isolation, there remains a lack of data on the extent of social isolation and how it might be changing across time. To answer this, social isolation was looked at in the NSHD and 4 other British birth cohorts, to identify potential generational and sex differences.
A range of social isolation factors including living alone, size of household, relationship status, frequency of contact with family and friends, employment, membership of clubs / organisations were explored and they showed there was no consistent pattern of increased or decreased social isolation over time. Some of the finding included:
The probability of living alone increased with age. There was also a difference across the generation with the more recent generations more likely to live alone across the lifecourse than older generations. This can be seen in Graph 3.
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- The probability of not being a member of a club or organisation increased from mid adulthood to older adulthood and then decreased in older age within the NSHD. When looking across the generations, the more recent cohorts showed a lower likelihood of belonging to a club or organisation.
- Men were slightly less likely to report regular contact with friends and relatives outside of the household at different life stages and to engage in regular religious activity and volunteering.
- More recent generations were more likely to report volunteering than earlier generations, and women were more likely to report volunteering than men in all cohorts.
Midlife health of only children
Despite persistent concerns that only children (individuals without siblings) are disadvantaged relative to individuals with siblings, there is very little research on the relationship with health in adulthood. Data from NSHD, as well as from the 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts found no evidence of only children differing from those with one, two or three or more siblings, at any age, with respect to: heart problems, hypertension, blood lipids, blood glucose or inflammation. Overall, we couldn’t find any evidence that only children had more chronic disease at any age in the UK.
Examining sex differences in cognitive ageing and lifetime risk factors for dementia
Louisa Needham has been working on an NSHD-related project for the last four years as part of her PhD and passed last summer with excellent feedback from her examiners. Her work focused on why women may be at an increased risk of developing dementia. She investigated this from different angles including looking for differences in exposure to dementia risk factors (such as low education, BMI, smoking, hypertension, pollution, head injury) and looking at the contribution that age at menopause may play. She found that women who experienced menopause later had slightly better cognitive function and brain health at age 70. Women also tended to perform slightly better across the life course on memory tests, particularly women who had better educational opportunities. She also found that over 50% of people had experienced at least one dementia risk across their life. Those who had exposure to more dementia risk factors had lower cognitive performance at age 70, but this relationship occurred to the same extent in women and men. Overall, this work provides evidence to support more research on women’s reproductive health and its links to dementia. It also provides evidence for the need for public health policies aimed at reducing risk exposures which could prevent or delay dementia onset in both men and women. Further research is going to expand on this to investigate which dementia risk factors, and when in the life course, may be most beneficial to target. Dr Needham wants to give her deepest thanks to the NSHD study members as the work, findings, novelty and impact of her thesis would not have been possible without the wealth of information provided by the dedicated study members.
The relationship between blood glucose and brain health
Another PhD student, Nasri Fatih, also passed his PhD last summer. His thesis focused on understanding how diabetes-related mechanisms affect brain health in the general population and used NSHD as an example of this. He found that, even in those without diabetes, women who had poorer control of blood glucose, tended to have smaller brains. He tried to see whether these results replicated in another population-based sample, UK Biobank, and found that they largely did. He explored potential mechanisms that may explain this but was not able to identify any potential causes. His work highlights the need to understand what may be driving this increased vulnerability in women and reinforces that abnormalities of blood glucose control even in people without a diagnosis of diabetes may have adverse consequences for the brain.
Nasri included the following statement in his thesis (of over 300+ pages) “I would like to thank the participants who are part of the MRC National Survey of Health and Development and Insight 46 for dedicating their lives to help scientific research. They have and continuously contribute to our understanding of human health through its various stages. This gratitude extends to the research teams who have been involved in the collection of data throughout all these years”.
The Garmin Watch Update
Our physical and mental health changes over time and can be affected by many different things including seasonal variations. Data collected during home visits or clinical visits is a snapshot of health measurements on a single day. Therefore, for the last two years, we have been running an NSHD wearables study, where study members have been wearing a Garmin device, completing a range of tasks and completing online questionnaires.
The study is closed to new recruitment, but we are still collecting data for those who still have a watch. A big thank all those who are / have taken part, we have been able to collect reams of brilliantly interesting data.