Documentation
Description:
The Brain Donation Program at Sun Health Research Institute has been in continual operation since 1987, with over 1000 brains banked. The population studied primarily resides in the retirement communities of northwest metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona. The Institute is affiliated with Sun Health, a nonprofit community-owned and operated health care provider. Subjects are enrolled prospectively to allow standardized clinical assessments during life. Funding comes primarily from competitive grants. The Program has made short postmortem brain retrieval a priority, with a 2.75-h median postmortem interval for the entire collection. This maximizes the utility of the resource for molecular studies; frozen tissue from approximately 82% of all cases is suitable for RNA studies. Studies performed in-house have shown that, even with very short postmortem intervals, increasing delays in brain retrieval adversely affect RNA integrity and that cerebrospinal fluid pH increases with postmortem interval but does not predict tissue viability.
Coverage
Spatial:
US
Follow Up:
Unknown
Provenance
Temporal
Accrual Periodicity:
Static
Start Date:
01 January 2026
Time Lag:
Not applicable
Accessibility
Access
Access Rights:
See dataset for details. Access data at:
Usage
Resource Creators:
Christopher Brown
Observations
Statistical Population
Population Description
Population Size
Measured Property
Observation Date
Persons
1077
Count
01 January 2026