Attention, memory deficits greater in Caribbean Hispanic adults with cognitive decline
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Key takeaways:
- Study included 299 Caribbean Hispanic individuals and 128 non-Hispanic white individuals with mild cognitive impairment.
- The Caribbean Hispanic group scored significantly lower on attention and working memory.
Older Caribbean Hispanic individuals with mild cognitive impairment scored lower on measures of attention and working memory compared with non-Hispanic white counterparts, according to researchers.
“Increased diversity in Alzheimer’s disease research is important to ensure people of all demographic groups have access to proper diagnostic procedures and treatments,” Katalina F. McInerney, PhD, a neurologist and researcher at the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, told Healio in an email. “In this case we were specifically looking at patterns of mild cognitive decline in Caribbean Hispanic individuals.”
McInerney and colleagues sought to compare patterns of neuropsychological performance in older Caribbean Hispanic adults with mild cognitive impairment against non-Hispanic white counterparts.
The study, which was presented in a poster at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, included 427 individuals, 299 of whom self-identified as Caribbean Hispanic (mean age, 76 years; 69.6% women) and the remaining 128 as non-Hispanic white (mean age, 72.9 years; 61.7% women). Participant data included Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scores as well as neuropsychological tests focusing on digit span, verbal fluency and memory taken within 90 days one another.
Researchers calculated adjusted Z-scores for sex, age and education for all cognitive tests and used analyses of variance to determine the impact of ethnicity and CDR global score (0.5, 1) on adjusted Z-scores.
According to results, Caribbean Hispanic individuals demonstrated greater impairment compared with non-Hispanic white individuals in digit span forward (42.8% vs. 17.9%), digit span backward (71% vs. 36.2%) and verbal fluency-vegetables (73.8% vs. 53.8%), regardless of CDR scores. The groups did not differ in episodic memory abilities.
Overall, the Caribbean Hispanic group scored significantly lower on measures of attention and working memory compared with the non-Hispanic white group, while verbal fluency between groups was variable.
“Our findings show Caribbean Hispanics might have higher instances of attention and working memory difficulties in early cognitive decline when compared to non-Hispanic whites,” McInerney told Healio. “They highlight the importance of assessing individualized patterns of decline to provide personalizes resources and treatments.”