LASI-DAD: Dementia Study Data for India's Aging Population
The Longitudinal Aging Study in India–Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia (LASI-DAD) is a nationally representative dementia study drawing on more than 4,000 adults aged 60 and older across India. Developed with support from the National Institute on Aging and conducted by the University of Southern California and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) New Delhi, LASI-DAD is the first study designed to estimate dementia prevalence at a national level in India and to examine the risk factors driving cognitive decline across a population of over a billion people.
LASI-DAD builds on the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI), a nationally representative survey of more than 70,000 adults aged 45 and older. From that larger sample, LASI-DAD recruited a dedicated subgroup for in-depth cognitive testing, informant interviews, and biological data collection, producing one of the most comprehensive Alzheimer's disease datasets available for research on aging populations outside the United States and Europe.
What the Dataset Contains
The dataset contains:
- 4,096 adults aged 60+ with harmonized cognitive measures, collected across 18 states and union territories in Wave 1; a second wave expanded coverage to 4,635 participants across 22 states and union territories
- Response rates of 82.9% (Wave 1) and 84.0% (Wave 2)
- Venous blood specimen data linked to the harmonized dataset, with 71.5% of Wave 2 participants contributing samples
- Genotyping data available for 960 respondents via a global screening array
- Neuroimaging data available for 137 participants
- Informant interviews collected alongside participant assessments to corroborate cognitive and functional status
What Researchers Can Do With This Dataset
LASI-DAD is built for researchers studying the prevalence, progression, and risk factors of dementia and mild cognitive impairment in a low- and middle-income country context. The dataset supports cross-country comparisons of cognitive aging, analysis of genetic and biomarker risk factors for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, and studies of how dementia affects household and caregiver burden. Its longitudinal design, now spanning two waves, also allows researchers to model cognitive decline and dementia onset over time within the same population.
How to Access The Dataset
The LASI-DAD dataset is discoverable through the AD Discovery Portal and accessible within individually permissioned AD Workbench workspaces at no cost to qualified researchers. AD Workbench provides free compute, virtual machines, and multimodal analysis tools and allows researchers to bring their own code, models, and approved external datasets into their workspace.
About the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative
The Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative (AD Data Initiative) is a global coalition of partners working together to promote and power data sharing and research collaboration to accelerate breakthroughs in Alzheimer’s and related dementias research.