Study Offers Clues to Racial Differences in Alzheimer's Disease | Hacker News Reader

Study Offers Clues to Racial Differences in Alzheimer's Disease

npr.org

46 pointsVarcht11 comments

I wonder if these correlate precisely to correspondingly differing incidence of herpes infection.

Confused about the link with poverty and stress. A linked article states: "Several teams presented evidence that poverty, disadvantage and stressful life events are strongly associated with cognitive problems in middle age and dementia later in life among African-Americans.

The findings could help explain why African-Americans are twice as likely as white Americans to develop dementia. And the research suggests genetic factors are not a major contributor."

Since there are more poor whites than African Americans, I don't understand why being poor explains African Americans being twice as likely to develop dementia?

According to the State of Working America:

> Among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans had the highest poverty rate, 27.4 percent, followed by Hispanics at 26.6 percent and whites at 9.9 percent. [0]

[0]: http://stateofworkingamerica.org/fact-sheets/poverty/

US population: African-Americans 40M, Whites 200M.

People in poverty: African-Americans (27%) 10,8 million, White: (9,9%) 19,8 million. So there are twice as many poor white people as black people.

How can poverty explain that black people get dementia more often? There are twice as many white poor people as there are black.

No mention of diet? Across the two populations in America, the diets between whites and blacks are vastly different.

Well, this study didn't take into account hypertension, diabetes or obesity, so I'd wager no on the diet either.

> For example, it could not fully account for the effects of some other known Alzheimer's risk factors — including hypertension, diabetes and obesity — or some suspected risk factors, including stress and poverty. Also, the study included just 173 African-Americans and was able to obtain spinal fluid samples from only half of them.

While diet may play a role in dementia, it has no role in this study. It's showing that there is a innate difference in the amount of a molecular biomarker in different races that should be considered when testing for dementia. A further study could test if diet causes a difference in the biomarker, but there's no reason for them to mention it here.

Why would the molecular biomarker not be subject to diet, are you sure it isn't?

There are tons of things that the biomarker could be subject to, there's no evidence that diet is relevant.

How are the diets vastly different when for example macro-nutrients are considered?

That was a bit unsatisfying, it seems no real answers, but I suppose that's to be expected considering the research is only in it's very preliminary stages. Considering the costs involved - getting volunteers and spinal fluids, it seems like we're not going to get meaningful answers in the near future.

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