BDNF val66met Genotype and Age: Hurricane Sandy Supplement

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We are requesting a 24 month extension (as per the specific and stated RFA guidelines) of grant 1RO1AG038734 under the RFA-OD-13-199, NIH Administrative Supplement to Recover Losses due to Hurricane Sandy, the funded extension option. The first 12 months will be funded in Year 6 of our grant, and the next 12 months will be at no cost, as directly specified in the Funding Opportunity Purpose, point 1, and Award Budget of the RFA. We believe that we are eligible for this award due to the recruiting shortfall we experienced as a result of the hurricane. The additional time will be used to recruit, enroll, and assess subjects for Aim 2 of our grant and conduct statistical analyses of the data and prepare manuscripts for publication. The extension will be used to fund additional Research Assistant, Post Doctoral Fellow, Co-Investigator and PI time for these purposes. Importantly, funds will not be requested for direct subject procedures (neurocognitive testing, MRI, genotyping, assay costs), as these funds are already included in the original budget and overall subject numbers will not change. We are requesting $ 129,692 in direct costs. Nevertheless, we appreciate that this specified time period is perhaps rather ample for our needs. It could result in over-recruitment, though we would view this outcome very positively. We are requesting no other Hurricane Sandy related support. Our detailed rationale follows: Our Institute (Feinstein Institute for Medical Research) is on Long Island (Nassau County) which suffered major damage during Hurricane Sandy. During the hurricane and in the weeks following, there was a significant disruption to staffing and to our subject recruitment pool. Disruptions stemmed from loss of electricity (generally in the two week range), school cancellations (in some areas for up to several months), and to loss of residences due to flooding. Subjects suffered similar disruptions, as the majority of them also reside in Nassau County and western Suffolk County on Long Island. Further worsening this situation was a gasoline shortage that made travel nearly impossible for weeks. The region was slow to recover from the effects of the storm, and it took several months for participation in our research trials to rebound to previous levels. Further impacting our grant timeline was the recent notification from NIA (Ryan Blakeney, Aug 21, 2013) that our grant period will be shortened by an additional three months due to changes in the fiscal year.