Age of Alzheimer's Onset in Latinos Puzzles Scientists

Abstract

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical & Research NewsFull AccessAge of Alzheimer's Onset in Latinos Puzzles ScientistsJoan Arehart-TreichelJoan Arehart-TreichelSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Oct 2004https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.39.19.0390034aLatinos living in the U.S. may develop Alzheimer's considerably earlier than American non-Latino whites do, a new, but small, study has found.The investigation was headed by Christopher Clark, M.D., director of the Memory Disorders Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania. He and his colleagues reported their findings at the Ninth International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders, held in Philadelphia in July.Clark and his coworkers compared the age of symptom onset of Alzheimer's disease in 119 U.S. mainland Latinos with the age of onset of the illness in 55 non-Latino white Americans. After taking possibly confounding factors such as age and gender into consideration, the researchers found that the Latino subjects had developed Alzheimer's, on average, almost seven years earlier than the non-Latino white subjects had.“I am sorry to say that at present I simply do not have an explanation for the earlier age of symptom onset in Latino immigrants,” Clark told Psychiatric News. “We need to look at the age of Alzheimer's symptom onset in nonmigrant Latinos from Mexico and Puerto Rico in order to better understand this finding.”Clark and his team will be submitting a detailed report of their study to the Journal of the American Medical Association.The study was funded by the National Institute on Aging. ▪ ISSUES NewArchived