David Snowdon

David Snowdon

David A. Snowdon (born 1952), is an epidemiologist and professor of neurology at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include antioxidants and aging, and the neuropathology of Alzheimer's disease, especially predictive factors in early life and the role of brain infarction.

He is the director of the Nun Study, a longitudinal study of aging and Alzheimer's disease which is following 678 members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame aged over 75 years.

Based on the NIH database of grants (CRISP), the study of aging and Alzheimer's disease in the Sisters began in 1991 after he joined the University of Kentucky. Many of the procedures were based on work by Dr. David Wekstein and Dr. William Markesbery. They had, in 1989, started a study of age-associated changes in cognition and function in a group of older adults in Kentucky who had agreed to brain donation at death. Their focus was to understand how changes in the brain could be linked to Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders in advanced age. The Nun Study was a natural extension of the ongoing work at the Alzheimer's Disease Center at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging. Their work continues with the help of over 1,000 older Kentuckians who volunteer to be part of this research effort.

Snowdon's book on the Nun study, Aging with Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives, won a Christopher Award in 2002.

678 members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in the U.S. participated in the Nun Study, a longitudinal study of aging and Alzheimer's disease initiated in 1986. The homogeneous life style of the nuns makes them an ideal study population. Convent archives have been made available to investigators as a resource on the history of participants. Of the 677 nuns which include Sister Kathleen Treanor, 93 and Sister Antoine Daniel, 96, only 61 surviving nuns recently completed their last rounds of intellectual and physical tests for the Nun Study. The nuns decided to donate their brains to science. They acknowledged the success to Dr. David Snowdon, epidemiology professor of University of Minnesota in 1986. In 1992, he administered annual memory and cognitive tests to 678 nuns ranging in age from 75 to 102.