An 11-Fold Higher Risk of Incident MCI With Hispanic Ethnicity and Baseline NPS
What is it about?
We investigate a new hypothesis about why Hispanics develop dementia at a younger age and how ethnicity interacts with another risk factor, neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPSs), to increase the risk of incident mild cognitive impairment (an at-risk stage for Alzheimer's disease). This study discovered that Hispanic participants had an 11-fold higher risk of developing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) compared to non-Hispanic participants. Hispanic ethnicity and neuropsychiatric symptoms jointly increased the risk of MCI, suggesting a potential risk group for Alzheimer’s disease progression.
Why is it important?
In previous work by our group, we described and presented early evidence of differences in the prevalence and presentation of NPSs in different racial and ethnic groups. Also known as neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS), NPS are core features of Alzheimer`s disease and related dementias. Once thought to emerge primarily in people with late-stage disease, these symptoms like anxiety, depression, psychosis, and apathy, are currently known to manifest commonly in very early disease and in prodromal phases, such as mild cognitive impairment. We discovered that these same psychiatric symptoms appear in asymptomatic, cognitively unimpaired community-dwelling older adults; however, the presence of one or more NPS in the Hispanic sample carried the highest risk, nearly equaling the impact of the Apolipoprotein E (APOE) 4 gene, a genetic configuration that increases a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease by 12 times in people with two copies of the gene. Finally, our findings add to the evidence and will guide ambitious national research initiatives aimed at disentangling the genetic underpinnings of NPS in Alzheimer's disease, such as the Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP).