The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded researchers at UC San Diego and UC Davis a $15.85 million grant to support the next phase of one of the nation’s most extensive studies on brain aging in Hispanic and Latino communities.
Latinos are one of the fastest-growing groups in the United States. They have a higher risk of heart and vascular diseases and are more prone to developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia than people from other groups. Still, Latinos remain underrepresented in research on aging and dementia. The grant will support the creation of the most comprehensive long-term dataset on Hispanic and Latino brain aging to date.
Hector González is a professor of neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Courtesy of UC San Diego Health Sciences.
“Latino communities have been historically overlooked in aging research. This grant allows us to change that,” said Hector González, Ph.D., co-principal investigator on the new grant and professor of neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “By studying brain health in a diverse and deeply characterized Latino cohort, we can develop better tools for early detection and more effective strategies for prevention that truly reflect our communities.”
The study will track brain and cognitive changes in Latinos from diverse backgrounds.
“Our goal is to identify the factors that matter most for healthy cognitive aging — and ultimately reduce the burden of dementia for millions of families,” said Charles DeCarli, UC Davis distinguished professor of neurology and the study’s principal investigator. DeCarli is also the co-director of the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
“Our new study will give us an unprecedented ability to understand how the brain changes over time in Latino communities.”
Developing precision medicine to serve everyone
In 2008, González and a team of researchers launched the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL), the largest study of Hispanic and Latino health and disease in the United States.
“At that time, most of the field focused on older adults — mostly people in their 70s and 80s. This was a challenge for researchers studying cognitive aging and dementias,” explained González. “So, we took a life course framework to capture maladies, such as diabetes and hypertension, which show up at different phases of life.”
Charles DeCarli is a distinguished professor of neurology at UC Davis.
Their study enrolled a relatively younger cohort of Hispanic and Latino participants. It included more than 16,000 Latino participants from continental (Mexico, South America and Central America) and Caribbean (Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico) Latino origins. The multi-site study enrolled participants in four centers: Miami, San Diego, Chicago and New York.
“What's unique about HCHS/SOL is that it was designed to get representative samples of people who come from various Hispanic-Latino backgrounds,” DeCarli said. “There are widely varying social, economic and environmental exposures, as well as genetic differences within the Latino community that may influence risk for dementia and need to be further studied.”
DeCarli and González collaborated with other researchers to produce the largest collection of brain MRI scans from this Latino cohort in a sub-study called SOL-INCA-MRI. With scans from 2,668 participants, they learned about how sleep, blood vessel health and genetics influence brain aging.
The next phase of deciphering brain mysteries
This new NIH grant allows the team to shift from single-time-point snapshots to long-term tracking of participants’ brain health. Over a period of around 12 years, the researchers will closely follow about 1,800 Latino adults. They will collect repeated MRI scans, blood biomarkers, health and lifestyle information and data from cognitive testing.
The goal is to better understand how Alzheimer’s disease, vascular injury and other brain changes develop over time — and why Latino adults face higher rates of certain cognitive disorders. The researchers aim to:
Identify early signs of memory decline.
Uncover reasons behind the higher prevalence of vascular-related brain disease in Latino communities.
Pinpoint modifiable risk factors that could help prevent or delay dementia.
Examine how social, cultural, and environmental factors interact with genetic risk.
“This new grant will allow us to build on our previous work and better understand the temporal factors affecting MCI and dementia,” DeCarli said.
DeCarli and González maintain that by understanding the modifiable risk factors (such as high blood pressure), there might be an opportunity to change the trajectory of brain aging and keep people's cognition intact.
“We want to address dementia and Alzheimer's disease, but we also want to address the other pathologies contributing to bad brain aging,” explained González. “What's truly unique and powerful about this study is the recognition, appreciation and emphasis on understanding these other pathologies by using data from the MRIs and biomarker panels.”
This story was adapted from a press release from UC Davis Health.
See also: NIH awards $15.8 million to UC Davis Health for major Hispanic-Latino brain health study
