In 1984 the National Institute on Aging created the first Alzheimer Disease Centers. In the 30 years since, the ADC program has expanded to include 27 centers across the U.S. A recent investigation evaluating the performance of the ADCs was conducted by a team of researchers including John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Core Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The results were published on February 10, 2014 in JAMA Neurology.
The group collected every article published by ADC investigators between 1984 and 2012 and used social network analysis to analyze co-publication networks. They examined the frequency of collaborations and found that “the collaborations established within the context of the ADC program are increasingly inter-institutional, consistent with the overall goal of the program to catalyze multi-center research teams.”
“It seemed obvious to many of us that the NIA funded AD Center network was having a powerful impact on AD research, care, policy and public awareness, so it was gratifying to show in this study using a novel social network analysis that indeed, the ADCs foster high-impact inter-ADDC collaborative research,” said Dr. Trojanowski.
You can read the study here.