Mature asian woman with alzheimer's disease,Elderly women forgot remember faces and name
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People who live in more disadvantaged neighborhoods may be more likely to develop dementia than those who live in areas with fewer disadvantages, a new study finds.
The study was published in Neurology on Wednesday.
The investigators evaluated data from 6,781 older adults who were aged 72 years, on average. The people were living in four communities in Chicago. Participants were tested for thinking and memory at the start of the study and every three years for at least six years during a follow-up period.
The team examined US Census data and found that 11% of participants who lived in the least disadvantaged neighborhoods had developed Alzheimer’s disease, compared with 14% in areas with the next lowest disadvantage, 17% in the areas with next-to-highest amount of disadvantage, and 22% in the areas with the highest amount of disadvantage.
When the researchers adjusted for other factors that could affect the risk of dementia (such as age, sex and education), they found that people in the most disadvantaged areas were more than twice as likely to develop dementia compared with participants in areas with the least disadvantage.
The investigators also assessed the annual rate of decline in test scores evaluating thinking and memory. Scores of people in the areas with the most disadvantage decreased about 25% faster than those of people in neighborhoods with the least disadvantage, the data revealed.
The authors pointed out that their results don’t show that neighborhood factors cause dementia; instead, they show an association.
“Our findings show that the community in which you live influences your risk of developing dementia,” Pankaja Desai, PhD, a study author from Rush University in Chicago, said in a statement. “Most studies of risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease focus on the individual level, not the community level. Of course, intervening at the community level is challenging, but prioritizing disadvantaged communities may be an effective way to mobilize resources for older adults and provide avenues for reducing the risk of dementia for the overall community.”
More Black participants lived in areas with greater disadvantage, whereas more white participants lived in areas with lesser disadvantage.
“Once we took neighborhood disadvantage factors into account, there was no longer a significant difference between Black and white people in their risk of developing Alzheimer’s,” Desai said.