Duke Kannapolis News

In conjunction with the 10^th anniversary of the first participant enrolled in the landmark MURDOCK Study, the Duke CTSI Translational Population Health Research group has announced plans to double its clinical research space at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis.

Duke recently kicked off the third year of the Project Baseline Health Study, reaching the midpoint of the study as Duke CTSI sites in Durham and Kannapolis began welcoming back participants for their third on-site visit.

So, you think aging starts at 65? Think again. Physical decline often begins when people enter their 50s, according to data from the Physical Performance Across the Lifespan Study (PALS), a collaboration between the MURDOCK Study and Duke Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center.

Ten years to the day after she became the first participant in the MURDOCK Study, Bobbie Beam returned to the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis on Saturday, Feb. 16 to celebrate the first decade of the landmark Duke CTSI study.

“It’s a wonderful thing,” said Beam, a retired nurse who joined hundreds of MURDOCK Study participants and community partners at the celebration. “I’m happy to be back.”

It took Summer Goodson, PhD, nearly a year to find six men genetically qualified to participate in a sperm function study at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute (NRI) in Kannapolis.

Male fertility is still a sensitive subject, said Goodson, a post-doctoral research associate at the NRI, making it tough to rely on traditional recruitment methods like fliers and advertisements.