Corewell Health is joining Johns Hopkins and Hampton universities in a first-of-its kind, $4.8 million research study to investigate the biological, social and psychological factors that could be driving racial disparities in Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s, a form of dementia that causes the loss of memory and other cognitive abilities, strikes about twice as many older Black Americans than white Americans, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Among Black Americans ages 70 and older, 21.3% have the disease.
It also is the fourth-leading cause of death for Black Americans ages 65 or older, said Stewart Graham, director of Alzheimer’s disease research at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak.
“It’s absolutely staggering, especially in terms of costs,” said Graham, who also is an associate professor at Oakland University. “By the year 2050, it’s projected that the cost of caregivers and medical treatments and everything combined is going to cost the U.S. $1 trillion per year.”
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The five-year research study, called the Black American United Memory & Aging Project, is funded by the National Institutes of Health. It’s unique in that it will be conducted entirely online and aims to recruit 600 Black Americans ages 55 and older from all parts of the U.S. who have no signs of dementia or memory loss.
“Everything is online,” said Travonia Brown-Hughes, an associate professor at Hampton University who also is a research scientist at Johns Hopkins. “People don’t have to leave their homes. The study allows us to meet people where they are. Patient or scheduling conflicts are not an issue … which allows us to reach more people than those individuals just within a 50 mile radius of our university.”
Because the population of Black Americans is growing — climbing 30% between 2000 and 2021, according to the Pew Research Center — research about racial health disparities among people with Alzheimer’s disease has become a priority, Brown-Hughes said.
“In the past, many studies have examined cognitive impairment. However, these studies have been done on predominantly white populations, and this underrepresentation of middle-age and older Black men and women continues to perpetuate a degree of uncertainty regarding the prevalence and also risk factors for cognitive decline in Black populations,” she said.
“Factors that impact late life health and brain health may start far earlier than 65. They may start at 40 or even 50, and these factors undoubtedly have an impact on brain health. … We need to start targeting younger individuals before they start to show symptoms of memory loss — those in their 50s and 60s, when prevention efforts can still be effective. It’s not enough for us to compare Blacks to whites. We need to know how Blacks differ from each other.”
Those who participate in the study will be given a mobile phone with pre-loaded cognitive training apps and cognitive testing apps that they’ll be asked to use. They’ll also donate saliva and urine samples that will be tested for biological changes associated with aging and inflammation.
“Inflammation exasperates Alzheimer’s disease,” Graham said. “We’re going to look at this over a four-year window and see if these individuals, in these particular niches, experienced increased inflammation over time. … We’re going to combine our biomedical measurements with all the psychological measurements, and with all of our cognitive testing information … which is going to give us a direct readout of how these individuals are affected over this time period.”
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To learn more or to sign up for the study, go to secure.ba-umap.com.
Contact Kristen Jordan Free Press at kshamus@freepress.com. Subscribe to the Free Press.