The best magazine
Understanding Your Risk for Alzheimer's
Jan. 15, 2002 -- A new study reveals that black people who have a parent or sibling with Alzheimer's disease are at greater risk of developing dementia themselves, compared with members of white families in the same situation. The findings are published in the Jan. 16 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Our findings ... support the growing body of data that risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease is higher in African-Americans than in whites," write Robert C. Green, MD, MPH, of Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues.
The researchers analyzed data collected at 17 medical centers between 1991 and 2001. They compared the lifetime risk of dementia among nearly 18,000 first-degree relatives of 2,400 white people with Alzheimer's, and among more than 2,200 first-degree relatives of 255 black people with Alzheimer's.
They found that by age 85, the risk of dementia in the first-degree biological relatives was more than 40% for the black people with Alzheimer's but only 27% for the white people with Alzheimer's. Relatives of black patients were 1.6 times more likely than relatives of white patients to become demented by age 85.
Interestingly, the researchers found that although blacks were more likely than whites to develop Alzheimer's if their parent or sibling had the disease, all other risk factors affected both groups equally.
For now, the reason behind the racial discrepancy remains unclear, but the findings may "provide estimates of dementia risk that can be used to provide counseling to family members of patients with Alzheimer's disease," the researchers write.
Source: ...