CAPRA - Year 4 Pilot Awardees
Emily M. Briceño, PhD
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Depression and Cognitive Decline: A Pooled Cohort Analysis of ARIC, CARDIA, CHS, FOS, MESA, and NOMASDepression is common and a modifiable risk factor for dementia. Vascular disease may be a primary mechanism by which depression impacts dementia risk. Depression is more common in women than men, and prevalence and treatment for depression may vary by race/ethnicity. It is critical to understand the extent to which depression could be targeted as a modifiable risk factor to reduce dementia disparities. We will leverage the BP COG dataset, a pooled cohort of six population-based cohort studies of individuals aged 18 to 95 at baseline with repeated measures of depression, cognition, and vascular risk factors. We aim to examine: 1) the association between cumulative depression burden and later-life cognitive trajectories; 2) whether this association differs by sex/gender and race/ethnicity, and 3) the extent to which this association is explained by vascular risk factors.
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Melissa Elafros, MD, PhD
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Zambian Cohort of Healthy Aging and Dementia Pilot Study (Z-CHAD)The burden of AD/ADRD is growing in low- and middle-income countries where two-thirds of individuals with cognitive impairment reside. In Zambia, risk factors for AD/ADRD include traditional cardiovascular and metabolic causes as well as others such as undernutrition. Despite this, data regarding the burden of AD/ADRD is virtually nonexistent. There is likely a high diagnostic gap for AD/ADRD in Zambia as few providers recognize symptoms of cognitive impairment and disease-associated stigma may hinder care seeking behavior. The objectives of this pilot study are to assess the burden of cognitive impairment in a population-based sample of adults in Lusaka and to characterize the burden associated with AD/ADRD diagnosis and care in this setting. This will serve as the basis for a subsequent urban and rural prevalence study which will inform the development and implementation of medical and behavioral interventions for individuals at risk for and living with AD/ADRD and their caregivers.
Other investigators on the work include: Chiti Bwalya, MPH, Lisa Kalungwana, MS, Matta Mataa, MBChB MMed, and Jeremy Tanner, MD MPH |
Nicole Hair, PhD
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Childhood Measles Exposure and Later-Life Cognitive FunctionThere is growing evidence that infectious diseases can have lasting effects on immunological, inflammatory, and vascular processes. We propose to evaluate to what extent public health campaigns aimed at preventing the spread of childhood communicable diseases may reduce an individual’s risk for Alzheimer’s and other dementias. The proposed project will leverage the introduction of a measles vaccine in 1963, and the corresponding dramatic reductions in morbidity from childhood infectious diseases, to examine how childhood measles exposure relates to cognitive functioning later in life. We will accomplish our study aims using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a NIH-funded longitudinal population-based study of individuals over age 50 with validated cognitive measures and geographic identifiers that will allow us to link contextual data, e.g., measles incidence rates, to an individual’s state of birth.
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Tiffany Kindratt, PhD, MPH
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Novel approaches to explore national and state-based evidence on the burden of cognitive difficulties among Middle Eastern and North African AmericansThe cognitive health of older Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Americans differs from other racial/ethnic groups. Existing national and state-based estimates of the disparity are limited because MENA Americans are classified as White by the US federal government despite evidence that their health and lived experiences differ from Whites. This is particularly concerning among growing populations of older adults in states with the three largest populations of MENA Americans (California, Michigan, and Texas). It also remains unknown whether removing MENA Americans from the White group will identify larger disparities in cognitive difficulties between other racial/ethnic groups and Whites. Using data from the American Community Survey (ACS), this study aims to use novel methods to examine cognitive difficulty among MENA Americans compared to all other federally required reporting categories and determine how these estimates differ when MENA Americans are removed from the non-Hispanic White group using national and state-level samples.
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Dahai Yue, PhD, MS, MBBS
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The Effects of Education Quantity and Quality on the Risks of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias Among U.S. Older AdultsPrevious work has documented a strong and mostly consistent association of educational attainment with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) incidence. Yet, isolating the causal effect of education on ADRD, and health outcomes in general, has been challenging due to unobserved confounding factors. Moreover, the impact of school quality on ADRD risks was dramatically understudied. Although prior evidence shows substate-level measures of school quality are related to higher income and upwards morbidity, little is known about its effect on ADRD risks. The overall objective of this pilot study is to examine the causal effect of education quantity on ADRD risks with novel causal inference methods and to investigate the effect of state- and substate-level school quality on ADRD risks.
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