Black Americans are at twice the risk of being likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease independent of genetic risk than white Americans, research suggests.
Perceived racism contributes to racial health disparities in cardiovascular disease risk factors, which also are risk factors for Alzheimer’s, it also has a significant impact on the racial health disparity in Alzheimer’s.
However, little is known whether or how chronic experiences of racism contribute to poor brain health.
Karin Schon, PhD, from Boston University School of Medicine, has been awarded a US$3.9m from the National Institutes of Health in order to address this pressing issue.
The objective of her research is to investigate the impact of racism burden of brain health in the medial temporal hippocampal (MTH) memory and prefrontal-executive systems in older black adults and to examine potentially underlying biological mechanisms.
The MTH and prefrontal systems are brain systems that show profound neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s.
Schon, who is a faculty affiliate at the Boston University Center for Anti-Racism Research said: “We hypothesise that cognitively healthy black seniors with higher racism burden will show greater CVD risk and poorer MTH and prefrontal system integrity than those who have lower lifetime racism burden.”
She also believes that CVD risk and mental health may explain the relationship between racism burden and neurocognitive integrity.
This suggests that poor cardiovascular health as a mechanism, underlies the relationship between racism burden and poor brain health in the MTH and prefrontal brain systems in Black seniors.
School is aiming to take an anti-racist perspective by focusing on the impact of interpersonal and institutional racism on brain health in Black adults.
The long-term goal of this research to contribute to health policy change from a cognitive neuroscience perspective with the goal to eliminate brain health inequities.
